Public Opinion

October 9, 2012

Parliament: Gillard's white hot anger

In Parliament today Tony Abbott attacked on Gillard for her support for the Speaker in the context of the Peter Slipper affair---- the claims of sexual harassment brought against him by James Ashby---- and the crude private text messages that compared a woman's vagina to shell fish (mussels). The federal court judge has reserved his judgment on the civil case before the court.

Abbott had moved a motion that called for the Government to remove Peter Slipper as Speaker under section 35 of the constitution, which states that the Speaker can be removed by a vote in the House of Representatives. Abbott argued that Peter Slipper is not a fit and proper person to be Speaker of the House of Representatives because he is a misogynist.

He said that the Gillard government is desperate and unethical, and appointing Mr Slipper proves it. Gillard is a running a protection racket. Its "another day of shame for this parliament, another day of shame for a govt which should have already died of shame."

Gillard's response:

In one of the most extraordinarily passionate parliamentary performance of her career Gillard was on fire with white, hot anger. She changed the debate from being one solely about Slipper as a sleaze bag who was no longer a fit and proper person to uphold the dignity of the Parliament--- to one about sexism and misogyny in political life, and its systematic use by the Liberal Party as a political tactic. It lanced a festering boil on the body politic.

The motion to remove Mr Slipper was defeated by 70 votes to 69 with the Gillard Government supported by Independent MPs Craig Thomson, Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Greens MP Adam Bandt. Andrew Wilkie voted with the Coalition.

It was the right decision. Given the separation of powers in the Australian Constitution (ie., (the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers) Parliament shouldn't do anything until the federal court makes its ruling with respect to the claims of sexual harassment brought against Slipper by James Ashby. If Parliament dumped Slipper before that ruling, then its acting as a de facto kangaroo court.

The High Court is the pre-eminent interpreter of the Constitution and defining the nature of the separation of powers in Australia. It has defined a separation of the judicial power from the executive and legislative powers, says (ie., the Mason Court) that that it not only interprets the law but also ‘makes’ the law; and shifted our understanding of the separation of powers doctrine towards a more American conception of institutional checks and balances to help to protect individual liberty.

As Justice McHugh pointed out:

the distinction between the judicial and the executive powers of government in particular continues to be jealously guarded in the federal sphere16 and operates in "full vigour"....in a Federal system, the absolute independence of the Judiciary is the bulwark of the Constitution against encroachment whether by the Legislature or by the Executive....legislators and members of the Executive Government have accepted - although often reluctantly - that in a federal system the courts must have power to declare invalid purported exercises of legislative power invalid. As a result, courts have often invalidated legislation that gives effect to major platforms of political parties.

The Coalition was on shaky legal ground with its motion that called for the Government to remove Peter Slipper as Speaker under section 35 of the constitution, prior to the courts deciding the sexual harassment case.

Update
Slipper has resigned as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He remains a member of Parliament as an independent backbencher. He finally got the message that he'd outlived his usefulness and that his position had become untenable. The Independents pulled the plug.

The Australian's columnists are out in force today defending Abbott. Their general line of attack is that Labor has egg on their collective faces because of its double standards. Peter Van Onselen, for instance, says:

The motion failed by the narrowest of margins, but not before Tony Abbott was directly accused of being a sexist and a misogynist himself. Not by an attack-dog minister mind you - by the Prime Minister herself. happened after the Opposition Leader had already engaged in a little rhetorical overreach of his own. He said that the government should have "died of shame": words eerily similar to Alan Jones's now infamous (and condemned) comments. But rhetorical errors by Abbott pale into insignificance alongside the government's attempts to defend Slipper, especially on the back of the moral outrage they have expressed about Abbott's attitude to women.

There is no mention of the extensive history of the use of sexism and misogyny by the conservative movement as a tactic to attack and damage Gillard. That too, presumably, is a little rhetorical overreach.

Update2
The Canberra Press Gallery do appear to be singing from the same songsheet. Gillard failed as a leader on the Slipper issue. They go on and on about a hypocritical Gillard defending the indefensible.

Some say that the judgement of the journalists have failed. Maybe for some ---given this New Yorker perspective. They all ignored the history of the sexism and misogyny that has been directed at Gillard, or the constitutional realities.

In my judgement what we have here is a strategy on the Right to up the ante on political conflict -- to increase the temperature, the tension and the stakes. They want blood--and they will keep battering Gillard non stop to bring her down, and then to ensure the blood flows. That strategy is obvious and one dimensional.

What is puzzling, though, is why those journalists in the Canberra Press Gallery who are not on the Right --eg., those on the ABC, such as Leigh Sales and Emma Alberici ----uncritically repeated the Right's spin and talking points of this event. For them it was a flawed Gillard who was in the dock. Why this interpretation? Why not something different? An interpretation that was their own? Where was the political context of the event for these oh so savvy insiders who pride themselves on their professionalism?

I do think that the credibility and the authority of the Canberra Press and Media Gallery and its gatekeepers has taken a severe knock from this event. The ground has shifted under them. We now watch Parliament, we trust our own judgements, we publish them in social media, we evaluate other interpretations of events, and we critically judge them for their plausibility.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:27 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

August 10, 2012

the media loose the plot

Backed by their own wing of think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, Australian conservatives are in the process of building a whole alternative ideology system, with its own facts, its own history and its own laws of economics. Their politics around the pricing of carbon is a good example.

We have entered a “post-truth” era in politics, and Tony Abbott has actually campaigned that way for the past two years. Everything is seen a political opportunity to use the tactics of fear to show that the incompetent and distrusted Gillard Government just staggers from one crisis situation to the next.

David Rowe

What is disheartening is that political reporters in the mainstream press have shown that they are incapable of figuring this post truth campaign out; or if they have, then they have not informed us of the mass deception. What appears to matter for the insider journalists (the political media) is not what’s true, but whether the tactics of the campaign strategy work.

The judgment is that Abbott's fear campaign is spectacularly successful, that of the Gillard Government is a disaster, and so the Gillard Government is going to be wiped out in 2013. This representation, we are confidently informed, is the basic structure of the world. There has been a remarkable silence around the truth content of that fear campaign.

So much for the whole idea of a watchdog press which is meant to help expose the lies of the fear campaign.

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July 31, 2012

just click bait?

Steve Bracks, the former Premier of Victoria, makes a good comment on the ABC's Lateline about the way the media frame politics in terms of leadership contests. He says:

my view is that we will see a very stable, strong policy period up to the next two years, up to the next election - or 18 months. I don't sense any movement at all in relation to the leadership, frankly, and I think we're seeing that really being put to bed currently. Look, if I can be frank with you, I think it's largely a media issue. It's always the case - and I made reference to some of this in my book as well - that sometimes the media get worried that they might miss a story so they want to get ahead of the story. And then in getting ahead of it, they want to make the story themselves.

I reckon that it is a media issue as well. Another example is the tensions that were endlessly predicted by the media around NSW senator Lee Rhiannon knocking off Christine Milne in the post Bob Brown Greens. These leadership tensions have failed to eventuate in conflict.

Bracks adds that he doesn't see the leadership issue being talked about publicly on the street and that he thinks people expect that the Labor Party have resolved this matter. The reason? Federal Labor have got a leader who has been confirmed by an overwhelming majority and I think they want to see the Government just get on with the job.

Bracks may be optimistic on the stable, strong policy period, but the Canberra media Gallery's obsession with leadership issues has become tiresome and tedious. I'm coming around to the view that they can only talk about this --at the exclusion of policy---because that is all they are capable of doing. Or is it simply lazy journalism. Stirring the leadership pot also probably required of them to sell newspapers. It's tabloid click bait.

But even click bait can becomes so cliched that it simply turns people off. People then become aware how impoverished the public discourse is around politics and how much junk the media produces. So we start to give up reading the newspapers.

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July 29, 2012

a political moment

The Australian Financial Review's Nielsen poll shows that the strong push from the NSW Right before this month’s state Labor conference to abandon automatic preferencing of the Greens is not shared by the broader ALP support base. This contrasts with Liberal-National Party voters’ views on the Greens, where 67 per cent say Labor is too close to the Greens and 67 per cent say the Greens should be put last in preferences.

So the NSW Right is out of touch with the ALP's Labor base, who say that the ALP's relationship with the Greens is about right or not close enough.

David Rowe

Why the disconnect? The NSW Right just love open cut coal mining. The more exports of coal the merrier, even if prime agricultural land is dug up in the Hunter Valley and tourism is damaged.

Just under 90 per cent of NSW's energy needs are currently met by locally mined coal, but that is just a fraction of what the state exports internationally. NSW exports just under three times as much coal as it supplies for domestic use and exports will double. No doubt you can holiday amongst a sea of open-cast mines.

Australia’s corridors of power are increasingly being mined to roll back environmental regulation to do with climate change and shifting to wards a more sustainable Australian economy. That shift is deemed to be left wing---The Greens are in favour of increased regulation to protect the environment---and this ideology must be opposed.

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July 12, 2012

scrutinising Abbott

Abbott's political style is one of endlessly repeated slogans, such as "turning the boats back" or the "great big tax on everything." He avoids going on those programs where the slogans are analyzed and he is forced to spell out the details of what turning the boats back means. He simply links turning the boats back to strong border security, another slogan.

What is surprising is that the Canberra Press Gallery has let him get away with this kind of rhetoric. They give him an easy ride. No better example is the way they talk about the carbon tax instead of carbon pricing, thereby accepting Abbott's central claim.

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July 2, 2012

fear and loathing

The conservative populists are on the march. They are angry, bitter and resentful.They want blood in the form of sacrifice.

They will probably not shift their position on carbon pricing despite the compensation and the lack of evidence for the doom and gloom rhetoric: the carbon tax is wreaking devastation on the economy, laying waste to industries and destroying jobs.

They can sense victory---its 60:40 against the Gillard Government on everything. They know that Labor has its back to the wall. So every price rise will be attributed to the carbon tax so as to confirm their deeply held belief that the increase in the price of carbon is a bad tax put in place by a bad government.

Why will the conservative populists not shift their view in the light of facts and being properly informed? Because their opposition to the carbon "tax" has become part of their identity as a conservative. It's become foundational, just like a belief in God is for Christians. It help defines who they are in opposition to their political enemy, so they are not going to change their mind because of facts or plausible arguments.

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July 1, 2012

a cynical politics

Jonathan Green highlights the tabloid's cynicism over asylum seekers to foster fear and loathing. What he doesn't mention is the cynicism of the Coalition defending human rights in the debate in parliament over the same issue.by saying that the Malaysia solution was beyond the pale because it did not respect human rights of asylum seekers.

In doing so they were appealing to a liberalism, which asserts that there are general but substantial moral truths, universally applicable, on which liberalism’s claim to deliver the human good is founded. The guiding idea behind fat-face liberalism is that there is a single life, best for everyone, on which everyone can rationally agree, at least in principle. This has given rise to legalistic liberalism, which seeks to referee conflicts about values and lifestyles by constitutional law and legal procedures.

The Coalition has a long history of being hostile to the universalism of human rights and to a Bill, or even, a charter of human rights in political life even though individual rights is designed rights to limit the power of government. They hold that a bill of rights leads to a politicised judiciary that would have the power to halt conservative political agendas.

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June 15, 2012

under pressure

In his article entitled Government must lower our great expectations in The Australian Paul Kelly says that the Gillard Government:

fights something more ugly than winning acceptance of carbon pricing - it confronts a structural shift in which wealth per person has been static for five years, making people cautious, frustrated and angry. This shift defines the mood of the nation, and resentment towards Julia Gillard as PM. It is tied to a paradox that makes people agitated about the public debate. Australia's economy is growing strongly but households feel anxious because wealth (not income) is under pressure.

Kelly finishes by saying that in retrospect, Labor should have used the global crisis, the deepest downturn since the 1930s, to transform public expectations about entitlements instead of telling the nation nothing would change and its entire program would be delivered. Labor has a good economic story to tell today, but it can be sold only in a climate of reform that is tied to lower expectations.

David Pope

Two quick points. The proper response to the global financial crisis was Government intervention in the economy that boosted spending. Secondly, with the return to modest growth the Gillard Government is taking modest steps to lowering expectations with its 2012 budget surplus (eg., cutting back on defence), trimming middle class welfare (eg., means testing the private health insurance rebate), and making the fossil fuel polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.

This is the right time to start trimming the culture of entitlement. Australia is the middle of the biggest capital expenditure boom in history, and this has coincided with the highest terms of trade in our history. The coincidence of increased jobs, low inflation and successive rate cuts is rare.

Kelly however, is using Laura Tingle Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation Quarterly Essay to push for the politics of austerity during the global financial crisis. It's the neo-liberal position of using the financial crisis to wind back the welfare state. What Kelly doesn't say is the Gillard's attempts to trim middle class welfare and change its culture of entitlement is opposed by the Coalition, which supposedly stands for small government and free markets.

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June 6, 2012

a scare campaign

Australia's economy continues to expand whilst the global economy is in recession. Thanks to the mining boom and China's demand for our iron ore resources.

That doesn't stop the scare campaign against carbon pricing in the form of a carbon tax that is a wrecking ball that will severely damage the Australian economy. The rhetoric, which mines the current of technophobia, holds that the carbon tax is more akin to a python squeeze than a poisonous Cobra bite. The rhetoric is designed to cause panic. We are all going to die.


David Pope

The scare campaign is designed to block the reforms that will shift Australia's economy to a low carbon economy and away from a total energy reliance on fossil fuels. The scare campaign--the lights will go out--- is premised on climate change being a scam from the left. Only nuclear will keep the lights on!

The other assumption of the rhetoric is that coal will continue to be the cheapest and the central source of power for ever and a day and so it will provide the cheap baseload power that Australia needs to be internationally competitive. In other words it is business as usual.

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April 23, 2012

ALP: Monday blues

I'd always thought that it couldn't get any worse for the Gillard Government. They remained deeply unpopular in the electorate---it is wipeout on current polls-- but they were pushing on with aged care reform, returning the budget to surplus and laying the ground work for a national disability insurance scheme.

But things do get worse. Federal Labor's determined desire to stay in power has just been undercut by the Slipper affair. The government is again forced to survive on the narrowest possible margin. The government's world of perpetual crisis.

David Rowe

The judgement is in: the Gillard Government is a lame duck administration. Whether this is a reasonable judgement is beside the point. People have switched off. They are no longer listening. They want a return to majority government. Or so it appears.

Troy Branston in Mud sticks to Labor after its slippery misjudgment in The Australian that supporting both Graig Thompson and Peter Slipper reinforced:

the perception that the Gillard Government would do anything it took to stay in power. Break promises, engage in dirty deals, backstab and cut loose anyone -- all in the naked pursuit of power.... trying to hold on to power at all costs, no matter how damaging it is to government and the party...the government is seen as almost too political: power-hungry, accustomed to game playing and obsessed with short-term tactics rather than long-term strategy.

He says that the Gillard government has only itself to blame if the scandals involving Peter Slipper lead it to lose its parliamentary majority and it finds itself out of power.

Will this public mood shift? Will it darken? What would it take to shift this mood? Or is the die now cast?

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March 31, 2012

Labor's Follies

In The Long Goodbye: Explaining Gillard’s Collapse in The Monthly Robert Manne argues that the strange and rather sudden collapse of the Gillard Labor government is grounded in a series of mistakes and miscalculations, beginning with Rudd in 2008, spiralling out of control in 2010, but only becoming irreversible and lethal with Gillard around the middle of 2011:

Federal Labor's woes rest on a string of particular, mostly avoidable, tightly interconnected, strategic blunders. As a consequence of these blunders, Tony Abbott now seems certain to be prime minister before the end of 2013

The grave structural weaknesses within the contemporary federal Labor Party and the deep factors threatening the future of all parties within the social-democratic tradition are not responsible for the federal Labor government’s present discontents.

There's nothing about the way that focus group research, polling, messaging and spin has colonized politics.

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March 27, 2012

political speculation

Will this happen to federal Labor in 2013?

David Rowe

The political fallout suggests that it sure doesn't look good for federal Labor.

Many commentators on the conservative side of politics seem to think so. Labor's brand has been trashed and it cannot be rebuilt. It's all done and dusted and there is little more to say other than the storms are building up.

However, George Megalogenis in The Australian doesn't seem to think so. His argument in Federal State Divide Offers Gillard Some Hope is that:

predictions of a federal wipeout for Labor in the rugby league states are premature.The evidence to date is that voters distinguish between federal and state in numbers large enough to deliver a split ticket, where the Coalition thrives in one jurisdiction while faltering in another.....It may be a long shot for the Gillard government, history suggests the next federal election is still winnable.

It's now a case of holding your political nerve in the context of poor polls, a very low primary vote, the unpopularity of Gillard in Queensland, the use of focus groups and the obsessive reliance on polling.

Labor is still a party bogged down in the past, still a captive of its shrinking trade union base and still poll-driven apparatchiks whose overwhelming priority is hanging on to power.That is not going to change in the next 18 months.

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February 27, 2012

ALP: where to now?

Federal ALP have had their cathartic therapy session in the form of a leadership spill about office politics. The after the event speeches of the winners and losers (71 to 31 for Gillard) were pretty standard. Neither addressed the view that what would have been best for the Gillard Government to avert a conservative Abbott government in 2013 would have been for Rudd and Gillard to complement each other in senior positions.

Of course, self -interest will ensure the ALP will unite after the therapeutic purge. Despite all the pledges it will be "unite" after a fashion, since federal Labor under both Rudd and Gillard has a track record of shooting itself in the foot.

A fractured Gillard Government is now fighting for its survival with one leg missing. Or is that one arm?

All the rhetoric about healing should be taken with a grain of salt. The wounds are too raw and deep, there is a fundamental disconnect between the Gillard Government and the broader Australian electorate, the Gillard Government faces the existential threat of being destroyed in the 2013 election, and the Abbott-led opposition will only increase the grenade throwing.

This is a government under siege. It is fighting issues of authority, legitimacy and trust in difficult times amidst the angst stirred up by its policy reforms.

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February 20, 2012

ALP: a self-inflicted madness

The Gillard Government is increasingly caught up in some kind of self-inflicted madness. It now looks as if the trajectory is one of self-destruction if Rudd continues his campaign for the leadership. Rudd doesn't have the numbers (around 30-35?) but he is doing everything he can to build momentum. He is causing trouble.

The momentum for an end to the civil war continues to build. Gillard should call a spill and end the speculation, rumours, gossip, whisperings, outbursts, bad mouthings, leaks etc when Parliament resumes next week. Rudd goes to the back bench and Gillard stands on her own.

The strange thing about this is that there is not much policy difference between Rudd and Gillard. Gillard continued with the policies of the Rudd Government and all the indications are that Rudd would continue with Gillard's policies.

Yet the ALP is tearing itself to pieces with its bawling. Over what? Electoral reality? If Gillard is a walking political corpse, facing a massive electoral defeat, then all Rudd can do is try and sell the same policies better. Then what? Electoral defeat?

In his The Labor Leadership: a time of peril and opportunity op-ed at The Drum Malcolm Farnsworth makes a good point:

It's de rigueur now to profess disgust at this turn of events. Serious minds decry the brutality, the ambition, the lack of policy debate. They bemoan a political system that has somehow failed. They proclaim a weariness with politics as usual. But I'm having none of it. These are marvellous times for politics. These are the times when you see how things really work. This IS the system working, not failing. These are the times when character is revealed, when political judgment is on the line, when boldness potentially pays big.

The system for Farnsworth is the factions in the ALP and the way they operate in exercising their power. It is the ALP's political culture that is destroying it.

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February 18, 2012

the political fog

Apparently these are the worst of times. We have a once-in-a-century investment boom in the resources sector and an economy in transition, but the public mood is one of depression and anxiety. The Coalition taps into this despair with its rhetoric of an "avalanche of job losses” hitting the Australian economy. That is accepted as telling the gospel truth about the way things are, even though unemployment continues to fall and economic growth continues.

Another irony is that the success Gillard is having in passing legislation through the Parliament---eg., the private health rebate means test legislation and a bill to abolish the Australian building and construction industry court---is increasing the despair about her leadership.

Those with an eye to the marketing aspect of politics would say that the Gillard Government cannot communicate--ie., sell---its reform successes, or even the good news on the economy. The Gillard Government is generally seen as an anti-business and directionless government. It is weak.

Philip Lowe in The Forces Shaping the Economy Over 2012 describes the positive spill-over effects of the mining boom thus:

The indirect effects come through a variety of channels. Day to day, they can be hard to see but they do percolate through the economy. In effect, there is a chain that links the investment boom in the Pilbara and in Queensland to the increase in spending at cafés and restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney. This chain starts with the high terms of trade that has pushed up the Australian dollar. In turn, the high dollar has meant that the prices that Australians pay for many manufactured goods are, on average, no higher than they were a decade ago, despite average household incomes having increased by more than 60 per cent over this period. The stable prices for many goods, combined with strong disposable income growth means there is more disposable income to be spent on services in the cities and towns far from where the resources boom is taking place. As I said, this chain can be hard to see, but it is real, and it is one of the factors that have had a material effect on the Australian economy over recent years.

At the same time, the high exchange rate is having a contractionary effect on other parts of the economy, as it reduces the international competitiveness of industries such as the manufacturing, tourism and education sectors, some parts of the agriculture sector and in some business services sectors.

So we have countervailing expansionary and contractionary economic tendencies ---an economy in structural transition. Lowe concludes his speech thus:

...the Australian economy started 2012 in relatively good shape. Growth has been around trend and inflation is consistent with the target, and there are reasonable prospects for this to continue. We also have much more flexibility to deal with unfolding events than almost any other developed economy.

This kind of analysis has little to no effect on the public mood of despair. The despair narrative sees Australia in decline. It's all gloom and doom. This public mood accepts that economic doom and gloom makes sense, and it's insecurities means that it buys the Coalition's calculated rhetoric that the economic decline it talks up can only be reversed by the politics of austerity---savage spending cuts.

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February 15, 2012

junk political theatre

I've been watching Question Time in the House of Representatives this week. It's been bad---real bad. I know that Question Time is political theatre designed for the Canberra media galley, but the theatre this week has been low grade junk. It is much worse than Moir's representation of politicians as clowns in a pantomime whose inept performance is sad rather than funny:

It's cartoonish politics. In Question Time the Coalition claimed that the government was going to kill the aluminium industry with its carbon tax whilst the government claimed that the opposition didn’t care about manufacturing jobs except to exploit their loss politically. On and on they went oblivious to how they sounded like schoolyard idiots playing nasty, petty games.

Oh, we've revisited the ABC's Four Corners trashy journalism on the Rudd assassination in June 2010, and the media's misrepresentations of the recent tent embassy event.

As Bernard Keane points out in Crikey with respect to the Gillard Government:

we’re at the same stage as previous leaders reached before their demise, when even the most trivial things are attributed significance. Get confused over your Roves, or be upstaged by your opponent who speaks Mandarin, or comment on a junior reporter’s outfit, and it dominates the media cycle, drowning out everything else. A politician needs clear air to communicate, and leaders die when the media cuts it off.

This is at a time when the Gillard Government passed the legislation to means test the private health insurance rebate ---a major reform that helps to reduce the blow out in the health budget in the near future. That was pretty much downplayed, even though some of the most difficult choices in the near future are likely to be about how to manage the scale of health and pension costs associated with ageing.

Parliament is not a clearing house of ideas. It is a hothouse increasingly divorced from the everyday life that citizens live in their daily routines. What is "debated" bears little connection to our daily life and is becoming marginal to it.

The Canberra media gallery just see the decline of the Gillard Government and the end game of Gillard's leadership and delight in being players stirring the plot. What they ignore is Parliament being trashed by the junk political theatre and the slow, steady collapse of its political authority.

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February 4, 2012

Canberra gaze: summer fever

I quickly glanced through The Australian this morning whilst having coffee before doing the shopping at the Central Market. It was full of commentary about the leadership tensions in federal Labor. The message was pretty simple. ALP is in turmoil. The knives are out. Gillard is toast.

The Canberra media gallery loves this stuff. This is real politics, not that vague, wishy washy policy stuff. The political journalists are counting the numbers for Gillard, Rudd and the undecideds--those who have quietly withdrawn from Gillard’s camp but can’t commit themselves to Rudd. Labor is now the main story, and the commentary is about the shadow plays within the shadow plays based on the usual informed sources.

I didn't bother reading the commentary. There was no need to. The headlines and cartoons said enough. The airwaves will be filled with ever more speculation about when the factional bosses will cut off Gillard's head when Parliament resumes next week. On their interpretation the power struggle has come to paralyze national politics.

If Rudd returns to power that means an early election to hold the ALP in line and Labor's major reforms, including the carbon tax, mining tax and the national broadband network will be flushed down the plughole. That's great news for Australian conservatives and the Coalition is already talking post-Gillard strategy. Their assumptions are that Gillard will not survive much longer as Labor leader and Rudd will replace her.

If things are as grim as portrayed by the press gallery's doomsaying fever, then Gillard should push through as much of her substantive reform agenda in 2012 as she can, given that the Gillard Govt is running out of time to implement its reforms. The neo-liberals are just inching to get back into power to start the slash and burn required to cut back big government (ie., the environmental state) and allow things to return to normal (the resentful mining industry runs public policy on iron ore, coal and the environment.)

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February 1, 2012

the new Abbott?

Moir's cartoon depicts the highly successful negative strategy adopted by Tony Abbott to remove the minority Gillard Govt from power. One consequence, though, is that Abbott is commonly seen as a boofhead and headkicker who opposes everything the Gillard Government does. He just pounds away.

In his "My Plan for a Strong Economy and a Stronger Australia", speech to the National Press Club Abbott endeavours to present a more positive persona. He begins by saying that Labor is hapless, lazy, complacent and hopeless at everything but deception and dirty tricks.

Abbott's message is that Labor trashes the economy, it shouldn't be trusted to remain in power, and it is only interested in its own political survival. Abbott is no one trick pony though. He has positive message for voters:

The only foundation for a successful country is a strong economy. The only way to take the pressure off family budgets, to increase job opportunities, and to have the better services and infrastructure that every Australian wants is to build a stronger economy....My vision for Australia is to restore hope, reward and opportunity by delivering lower taxes, better services, more opportunities for work and stronger borders....At the heart of our plan for a stronger economy is getting government spending down and productivity up so that borrowing reduces, the pressure on interest rates comes off, and taxes can responsibly come down.

His plan for a stronger economy is to scrap unnecessary taxes, cut government spending and reduce the red tape burden on business. So it will be cutting and cutting to get the budget into surplus, beating up on the public sector and all things governmental (except the military) and doing so in the context of the widespread recession in the US and Europe. The Right does this nonstop, since all their talking points disparage the role of an oversized federal government: government is nothing but oversized, wasteful, bureaucratic, corrupt, and oppressive.

Contradictions run through Abbott's speech. He favours economic responsibility and a quick return to a surplus budget on one hand, but expensive new social benefits on the other, such as a paid parental leave scheme, dental treatment on the Medicare schedule at a cost of $4 billion a year, and a disability insurance scheme for another $6 billion. These are not Magic Pudding promises since the contradiction is resolved by saying that once the budget is strongly back in surplus, then the government can provide the additional services .

Abbott says that he favours a capable manufacturing sector, a growing knowledge economy and a sophisticated services sector as well as strong resources and agricultural industries, but the national broadband network will be dumped and better broadband will once again be delivered through market competition, just like the old days. The inference here is that the Coalition's emphasis will be on Quarry Australia not on a knowledge economy, since funding for the National Broadband Network (NBN) and a number of other tech projects would be redirected to building roads and tax cuts.

Abbott's emphasis is on a strong, prosperous economy moving from one state of equilibrium to another that will be delivered through small government, low taxes and individual freedom. That means that the end of a carbon emissions trading scheme since Labor’s "carbon tax" is just socialism masquerading as environmentalism. The best approach to greening the economy is not the market, but big subsidies ($10 billion) to the agricultural industries and industry to reinforce what businesses are already doing plus volunteerism and “self-organization”

Abbott says nothing about how the prospects for future economic growth rest on the ability of governments to wean societies off fossil fuels; or the need for big government to deal with big storms and floods caused by an unraveling climate system.

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January 30, 2012

storm in a teacup

Ho hum. Another media beatup by the Canberra Media Gallery with the headlines of "Australia's day of disgrace" or commentary about a blight on our national day.

This beatup amplifies the Coalition's attack about a former staff member's (Tony Hodges) role in informing the tent embassy protesters via the intermediary of the ACT union leader Kim Sattler about Tony Abbott's whereabouts at The Lobby restaurant on Australia Day. Oh, and what Abbott said about the time of Aboriginal tent embassy being up. There's no evidence of a criminal act by Hodges, the AFP is not conducting an investigation, and Hodges has resigned.

The Coalition's outrage with its rhetoric of riots, mobs inflamed, greatest breach of security ever, thuggish violence etc is designed to undermine Gillard's political credibility. Their political framing is that it is all Gillard's fault etc , etc. It's just part of the warfare game of politics. It looks as if 2012 will be the same as 2011. The Canberra Media Gallery follows along, jazzing up a minor event.

Gary Sauer-Thompson, Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra, circa 2006.

The Australia Day events are a media beatup because the AAP reported (1.35pm on Thursday) that ''Tony Abbott says it's time to move the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra''. Yet the media isn't critical about the right wing's media practices in heating up the political atmosphere, or the dog whistle about the riots being incited by the PM's office, or their simplistic and cartoonish representations. The Canberra media Gallery's narrative is one of Gillard leading the Labor government to extinction and they simply frame the pub gossip about a minor event in terms of 'will Gillard survive 2012'? Or when will Rudd challenge?

One infers from the media construction of a 'riot' by a 'mob' that was 'violent' that we have a media fabrication before us. The media now see it as their job to heat things up, deepen the party political divisions, and launch attacks on aboriginal activists. The cultural wars continue.

Underneath this political hothouse runs the thread of those who identify with settler Australia. They continu to justify the dispossession of indigenous Australians from their land by Britain, the colonization, applying English law to aborigines, and the decades of neglect. They continue to defend settler Australia against the black armband interpretation of Australian history.

What is obscured by the media beat-up is the pressing issue of Aboriginal people moving from welfare dependence (with its associated deeply entrenched destructive behaviour that tolerates excessive alcohol abuse, domestic violence and school absenteeism) to take part in the market economy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:26 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

January 14, 2012

Politics and Television

What the media industry call "convergence" is all based on the realisation that, since the 1990s, most media – print, audio, video, graphics – have been reduced to the lowest common denominator: bits, the ones and zeroes of binary arithmetic. The TV industry assumed everything would converge on the television set in the living room.

The assumption where was that television industry was shaped in an era when broadcast (few-to-many) organisations were the dominant organizations in our media jungle. During this period electoral success required political parties to buy endless hours of expensive television time for commercials that advertise their virtues and, more often, roundly assail their opponents with often spurious claims. Television ruled and broadcasters shaped our viewing habits, changed our politics and determined how we spent much of our leisure time.

In Politics and Television: How To Level the Field in the blog of the New York Review of Books Max Frankel states in relation to the US that:

It has long been obvious that television ads dominate electioneering in America. Most of those thirty-second ads are glib at best but much of the time they are unfair smears of the opposition. And we all know that those sordid slanders work—the more negative the better—unless they are instantly answered with equally facile and equally expensive rebuttals.

He adds that a rational people looking for fairness in their politics would have long ago demanded that television time be made available at no cost and apportioned equally among rival candidates.

Frankel adds:

But no one expects that any such arrangement is now possible. Political ads are jealously guarded as a major source of income by television stations. And what passes for news on most TV channels gives short shrift to most political campaigns except perhaps to “cover” the advertising combat.

This is another way in which the media has failed citizens in a liberal democracy--it fails to provide comprehensive and serious account of serious news as distinct from infotainment.

An example of this in Australia is how the television industry media grabs represents Tony Abbott in hard hat and yellow vest standing in battler country raging about the carbon tax will destroy the country and ruin us all via the pressures on the cost of living. No attempt is made by the televisual media to unpack the distortions, misrepresentations and lies about carbon pricing. We just have the media grab of Abbott saying Whyalla will be wiped out. They just toss the stories in and wash their hands of the ethics.

The tabloid form of the televisual industry is often the purveyor of misinformation and misrepresentation in their stories (eg., "whipping up a climate of fear of Islam) and it has little interest in self-criticism about its process of dumbing down as its audience fragments across the internet. There any no financial penalties (heavy fines) for lying by regulators in Australia. There ought to be.

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November 26, 2011

nay saying

Gillard's people skills have helped in ticking off two of the three nominated priorities when she became prime minister - a price on carbon and the mining tax. In all, 254 pieces of legislation have been passed by what Abbott says is a Greens-led government and in a Parliament that doesn't work. Abbott says his fight is to say no to what he calls the Brown-Gillard socialist government.

If Abbott has done a powerfully effective job of highlighting Gillard as the problem, then the passage of the carbon pricing and mining tax highlight the policy limits of Abbott's strategy of nay saying in the form of conservative populism.that Increasingly this involves ever more huffing and puffing and angry bluster--eg.,the 34 attempts to bring a censure motion against the Gillard Government.

Still, the Gillard Government is an unpopular one and there is no sense of revival in the political landscape. It survives as a minority government. Malcolm Farnsworth is right: little has changed. It is still is an open question whether the Gillard Government can rescue their dire standing with the electorate---to lift the ALP's primary vote to the mid-30s early next year.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:45 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 22, 2011

Tony Windsor's muscle

Now we can see one of the benefits of a minority government in the context of a capital intensive mining boom that is driving Australia's economic growth.

It was Tony Windsor, not the Greens, who used his political power with respect to the mining tax to negotiate on behalf of those farm groups and environmentalists who are worried about the potential impact of coal and coal-seam gas developments on precious but poorly understood underground water resources from the Darling Downs to the Liverpool Plains.

Windsor has said he won’t back the government’s Mineral Resources Rent Tax unless more is done to make coal seam gas mining sustainable.He also called for $200-400 million annually from the tax revenue to go toward bio-regional assessments. He also wants to see the Commonwealth have greater power over granting coal seam gas mining rights.

The Gillard Government has acted to address the concerns over:

• The competition posed to agriculture and the environment by the massive volumes of water required for mining;

• The potential damage to and contamination of underground aquifers; and

• The potential threat posed by millions of tonnes of super saline water brought to the surface with coal-seam gas.

The new Independent Expert Scientific Committee will provide scientific advice about coal-seam gas and large coalmining approvals where they have significant impacts on water. It will oversee research on the impacts on water resources from coal-seam gas and large coalmining projects. And it will commission and fund water resource assessments for priority regions.

Gillard gets what she wanted --the passage of the (much watered down) Mineral Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) in the House of Representatives---after negotiating with Andrew Wilkie to increase the $50 million profit threshhold at which the mining tax will apply to $75 million, phasing up to $125 million.

Then she can chalk up another significant piece of legislation passed. She just needs to negotiate with The Greens to find some of the revenue lost from raising the threshold.

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November 13, 2011

questioning the hate campaign against the Gillard Govt

A questioning of the Canberra media's gallery entrenched narrative that Bob Brown is pulling the PM's string, Labor will almost certainly lose the next election, and that Julia Gillard will not be Prime Minister much longer.

In this start of an analysis of the hostility and negativity towards the Gillard Government by Paul Strangio says:

I suspect when we look back at the current era we may come to view it as another such interregnum, as the neo-liberal regime decays and its replacement is yet only dimly grasped...And even if this is not the case, there is a disjunction between the most extravagant criticisms of this government and Australia's relative economic prosperity and stability, especially when viewed in the context of the financial woes and political dysfunction in much of the rest of the world (look no further than the euro zone).

I suspect that Strangio is right---the neo-liberal regime that emerged in the 1980s, and is the cause of a massive upward redistribution of income over the last three decades, is in the process of decay.

That regime structured markets in such a way as to have the effect of redistributing income upward. The global financial crisis gives us an insight here: the government deregulated the finance industry which allowed the banks to make massive profits, then it socialized Wall Street's losses, and the public bears the cost of the bailout through the politics of austerity. That interference with the market is an example of the neo-liberal regime working to structure the free market for the corporate sector.

Dean Baker in his The End of Loser Liberalism has more examples. The political right then presents the imposition of rules that ensure that income flows upward as the natural result of unfettered market forces..

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September 20, 2011

out of the loop

I've been out of the political loop as I've been in Ballarat and Melbourne on a phototrip. I haven't listened to the news or read a newspaper since Friday. I presume that I haven't missed that much.

Abbott is continuing to tear up the rule book and to up the anti on conflict to smash the Gillard Govt; the latter continues to limp along; the rhetoric about stopping the boats and breaking the people smuggling business model is still being rolled out; News Ltd continues to rant and rave about the media inquiry and the Green bullies continuing to run the country and hold it to ransom; and Gillard and Labor continue to be unpopular because of doing deals with the Greens.

Question Time is as bad as ever. Etc etc. Has anything shifted in the political landscape?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:02 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

August 12, 2011

The Coalition's slash + burn

So the Coalition is finally starting to come clean on its claims about returning the budget to surplus.

It needs to cut the budget by $70 billion in budget savings to fund its promises. Dumping Labor's carbon tax would cost $27bn over four years; scrapping Labor's new mineral resources rent tax would cost $11bn; $8 billion in tax cuts and $37 billion in existing Coalition policy commitments.

Whole government departments would need to be dismantled. You can bet what would be targeted----anything to do with a Green agenda along with health, education and the NBN. That politics of austerity will give substance to the tabloid media and the shock jocks on commercial radio claims that Australian's are doing it tough and that it is all the fault of the government. The journalists working in the tabloid media and the shock jocks can then comfortably say to the electorate ''we feel your pain".

It's sticking the boot into the welfare state but it is called 'Australia putting its financial house in order.' The progressive vision of a social democracy funded by high levels of taxation on the productive private sector is simply unaffordable. It leads to national insolvency. So the entitlement culture must be attacked and rolled back.

Apparently, less welfare for the working class--the end of entitlement -- will lead to better social cohesion in spite of the increased joblessness, poverty, and income inequality. Austerity is it’s going to shrink the economy; a weaker economy means less revenue; unemployment; a depressed economy means less business investment; there's the waste of talent because young people have their lifetime careers derailed. If the economy is weaker in the long run, this means less revenue, which offsets any savings from the initial austerity.

What we have here is an irrational debt and deficit phobia fabricated by the Coalition and its conservative economic supports proclaiming the virtues of austerity and deregulation. What we have is public funds being used to bail out exposed creditors and shore up asset values, while the "crisis" is going to be used to suppress wages, postpone meaningful regulatory reform and expenditure on the welfare state (i.e. the losers and chiselers) is slashed.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:06 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 1, 2011

defending the need for a media inquiry

In More Regulation Won't Fix The Media at New Matilda Michael Davis argues against media regulation--- that is, regulation of journalistic ethics to ensure a greater right to privacy, or for tighter control of newspaper ownership-- to ensure greater diversity.

He joins a number of others, mostly journalists in Australia, who oppose a media inquiry, greater regulation and reducing the concentration of ownership in the media in the name of freedom of expression and the mass media effectively holding modern politicians to account.

Davis questions the standard argument which he attributes to Wendy Bacon; namely, that a robust democracy requires diversity of ownership to minimise the risk of biased news reporting — and if this diversity cannot be achieved through a free market it should be imposed through legislation. He does so from the perspective of the market and avoids the right to privacy arguments.

Davis' argument is two fold. First:

it is a time of change in the media — and also one of great promise. Those calling for media control should look forward to the digital future not to the moribund state of newspapers. The last thing we need right now is government overview of online media, the effect of which would be to reduce, rather than increase, market dynamism and diversity by imposing regulatory barriers to entry or worse, control of content production.

This is jumping the gun. What is being called for is a media inquiry not the imposition of regulatory barriers to entry or control of content production. Who is calling for that in Australia? I can only think of the Australian Christian Lobby's censorship campaign.

Davis' second argument addresses the assumption of a connection between ownership and editorial direction. This refers to the claim that Rupert Murdoch is a right-wing ideologue intent on destroying welfare states, cutting taxes for the rich and launching neocolonial wars. This assumption Davis says is by no means obvious because there is a diversity of opinion within the Murdoch press (plus reader demographics and editorial styles) and that News Corporation, like companies in other industries, is more likely to be driven by commerce than politics.

Even if the the editorial line of any given paper is a creative fiction aimed at building a saleable identity, there is the anti-Labor anti-Green campaign being openly conducted by News Ltd and it is premised on regime change. The political agenda gives rise to bad journalism that has more to do with mass deception than speaking truth to power. This erodes the idea of News Ltd's news outlets as agents of truthfulness or honest political analysis. So what is wrong with a media inquiry to find ways to making journalists accountable to the public for their lies, half truths and deception, given that deception is a customary practice in Australian UK journalism?

Davis does acknowledge that we should be less concerned with political ideology the more concerned with insidious problem of a too-cosy relationship between government and media resulting in an unwillingness to hold government to account. A core issue is the existence of a political class---the power nexus between media, politicians and police--that is being uncovered in the UK as a result of the News of the World phone hacking scandal; and how this power nexus warps and corrupts the institutions of liberal democracy.

Though Davis raises the power issue he does not link it to the call for a media inquiry. If News Ltd is is too powerful, then much of his power derives from the Faustian bargain struck by modern politicians with the modern media. It is less corruption and more political class---backscratching, the cover ups, the instinctive regard for one another’s interest amongst press, police and politicians--that is integral to a whole system of rule.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:18 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 27, 2011

big whingeing retailers

Australian retailers are a tiresome lot. Sales are down in a two speed economy because consumers are not spending, even though national income is rising from the mining boom in iron ore, coal and gold. Savings are going up and consumer spending is subdued.

The retailers are blaming the high Australian dollar, the GST-free zone for Australians buying goods worth less than $1,000 on international websites; the carbon tax (its not even been introduced) and Julia Gillard herself. It's basically all the governments fault. Bash the Labor government and woe is me is the new corporate game. They're big whingers.

What the Australian retailers refuse to do is to look at themselves. They both missed the online retail opportunity, refused to re-invent the way they do business, and the tried to block it so they could continue with their bricks and mortar business of price gouging the Australian consumers with their huge markups. Australians shopping on overseas websites can be traced to the refusal of importers, distributors and retailers to pass reduced costs on.

The whingeing retailers turned their back on the Internet 10 years ago We are now starting to see the consequences of the internet becoming a shopping mall: the steady demise of the bricks and mortar retail chains with high priced goods (Borders, Angus and Roberston, the rag trade, eg. the Colorado chain). The big retailers--eg., Harvey Norman--- will eventually be forced online kicking and screaming.

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July 17, 2011

Keating enters the carbon debate

Paul Keating on Lateline last week highlighted how a carbon pricing will enable the allocation of capital to the new growth industries that will emerge from the increased price on carbon. These represent Australia's future, whereas the coal fired power stations are part of the old industrial revolution.

Keating's argument is that it is prices and markets that shift the big things and that the new industries are the key new growth industries:

We won't have them here. I mean, the idea here that we turn our back on the new country, on the new transforming Australian economy, by not letting carbon be priced and therefore capital allocated properly is nonsense .... Manufacturing's moved to the east. It's the service industries are the new growth industries. So, to turn your back on the mechanism which allocates the capital out of the old industries and into the new ones is to turn your back on your future.

That is the big picture argument that keeps being forgotten and is rarely explored or evaluated in the media.

Keating also raises the issue of the media's poor performance in the analyzing this big reform with its "he said she said" style of reporting and adds that News Ltd is campaigning for regime change in Australia. Tony Jones avoids the issue of the media's poor performance in analyzing this reform to talk about Murdoch.

When is the media in Australia going to become self-critical about its obvious flaws? Apart from its "How much will you pay, and how much will you get back?" response to the carbon tax package a lot of of the media has more to do with mass deception of the public than with truth---isn't the media's motto the fearless advocacy of the truth?

It is true that the carbon package on its own will not bring big reductions in emissions in the short term, but it can be seen as the first step on the long road to a lower-carbon economy.This is a long term reform process.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:33 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

July 11, 2011

carbon tax: going slow

The various Australian industry lobby groups (Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry or ACCI, the Australian Coal Association and the Australian Industry Group) some free market economists and conservative politicians have beaten up the carbon tax big time as a radical and painful measure that would lay waste to the economy.

Australia's media bears some responsibility for perpetrating this deception in that they failed to investigate and critique the cartoon doom and gloom images about economic ruin:

Despite Australia being the world's 10th biggest aggregate emitter, with the world's highest per capita emissions, our mitigation effort and short-term target (a cut of minus 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020) are among the weakest among all industrialised and major industrialising nations.

And there are heaps of subsidies and compensation to ease the political fallout on the Gillard Government by showing that Abbott’s big scare campaign about the cost of living has been wrong and to deprive him of the chance to offer his own tax cuts.

The economic reality is otherwise and the ground underneath the Australian industry lobby groups and the conservative politicians has been effectively undercut. Their lines of "a toxic tax ", "socialism masquerading as environmentalism", economic ruin, recklessly shooting our wealth-creating industries in the foot etc etc now sound decidedly hollow.

It is the free market economists who are quick of the mark to create doubt about this first step to a low carbonb economy. For instance, Sinclair Davidson says at The Drum that Treasury modelling relies very heavily on assumptions about technology. Consequently,

Electricity generation is expected to move from being predominately coal-generated to renewable energy with some coal being used in combination with carbon capture and storage technology. Right now that technology is not viable; Treasury assumes it will be viable after 2021. Renewables are expensive and unreliable. Treasury imagines the greatest growth will be in geothermal energy – again a technology that is unproven.

Davidson comments:

Of course technological improvements occur all the time and these technologies may well be viable in future. Yet the Government is betting our economic prosperity on these technologies becoming viable in the very near future. If those assumptions do not work out, electricity prices will be very high and very likely Australians will experience rolling black-outs. This is a policy that undermines our domestic energy certainty.

The message? It's too risky. The lights will go out. So the deal fails. What has happened to the Hayekian idea of markets and innovation? What has happened to an analysis of the public policy that addresses this risk--eg., the investment fund to facilitate innovation ion the renewable industry?

Judith Sloan's response is that to the target of a reduction of 5 per cent by 2020:

the wildly inefficient schemes – particularly the subsidisation of small-scale renewable energy and the appalling Mandatory Renewable Energy Target – will be required to do the heavy lifting in order for the target to be met..Indeed, it is a case of a major opportunity foregone – to replace the melange of inefficient schemes with a carbon tax...The explanation, of course, is politics. The only way to get the Greens across the line with a 'low and slow' approach to the introduction of a carbon tax was to continue, indeed bolster, the concoction of visible, feel-good but costly schemes.

Her judgment is that it is:

Better to feel you are doing good rather than actually do good, seems to be the message. And when billions of dollars of other people's money can be directed to your mates in the renewable energy industry and the research community, the package all of a sudden makes sense. Hence the creation of ARENA – the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – clinched the deal.

The inference? Corruption!

Sloan does not mention that Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation with its $10 billion for innovation in renewable and clean energy--- will be placed out of the hands of politicians. They are independent and will sit beyond ministerial interference.

The unspoken assumption of Davidson and Sloan economics is that the governments have the ability to destroy economies and that interventionist politics undermine economic prosperity. There ought to be less not more regulation with respect to energy markets. Heavy-handed regulation by hands-on apparatchiks, undermines investment and the rewards for risk taking in business.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:15 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 30, 2011

side show alley

My judgement is that climate change is now the central public policy issue that needs to be addressed by the current Parliament. It looks simple on the surface doesn't it: both Labor and the Coalition claim a reduction target of 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 and that they are simply arguing about the best mechanism to get there. It's either carbon tax leading to an emissions trading scheme, or direct action funded out of the budget.

Dig beneath the surface and it gets more complicated. Many in the Coalition are still deeply opposed to the IPCC's evidence of man-made warming, have adopted an anti-science position and demand that their personal opinion be taken as seriously as the objective evidence from scientific research.

The anti-science noise is from the carnival barkers at the seedy-looking sideshow in a tacky fairground full of astrofurfers. The main game is in the public policy arena and it is the negotiations taking place within the Multi Party Committee on Climate Change (MPCCC).

Here the debate is about a carbon price mechanism that could commence with a fixed price (through the issuance of fixed price units within an emissions trading scheme) before converting to a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme. The last meeting issued a number of working papers, which I cannot find online.

The negotiations appear to be between the Gillard Government and Big business groups with the latter, as expected pushing for a very low starting price for carbon. The proposal would be something along the lines of a fixed price for three to five years followed by a floating price. If a low starting price is what is agreed to, then that means a step trajectory in the price of carbon to meet the 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020.

Of course, Big Business has no intention of trying to meet that target, nor the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change". Australia's emissions levels keep on increasing, the electricity generators and coal industry are talking in terms of an anti-carbon tax campaign and they want more coal fired stations to be built.

The hard reality is that Australia's seconomy runs on energy, and since most of that power continues to comes from coal, oil and gas, GDP and carbon emissions will be bound together in an economic growth lockstep---Australia's economy is expanding again and belching out more carbon.

Update
In his final report ---Garnaut Review 2011--- Garnaut recommend polluters pay a carbon price of $26 a tonne, raising $11.5 billion in the first year of a carbon tax. Garnaut says 55 per cent of the revenue should go to households and 35 per cent to the polluting businesses as compensation.The remainder will go towards innovation and carbon farming, which will be offset by existing spending. The move to a full floating-price emissions trading scheme should be made in 2015

I await the howls of outrage from the special interests opposed to reform. They are unwilling to pay for the real cost of their carbon pollution--- ie., charging for CO2 emissions--- and are unwilling to invest in clean technology options. Their politics is one of continuing to not to pay a price for continuing to pollute. The Liberal Party supports them.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:53 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

May 1, 2011

Budget politics

I guess that Gillard's speech at the Sydney Institute on April 13 set the scene for the 2011 budget. It warned us that the forthcoming budget would see a tight rein on spending to return the Budget to surplus in order to make the boom last.

Will this austerity budget in the context of revenue shortfalls counter Abbott's key message that Labor's policies are failing and that they constitute a betrayal of ordinary people?

A strong theme of Gillard's speech was welfare-dependency and extensive welfare reform, by which she meant:

Income management, improving school enrolment and attendance, tighter eligibility and smarter employment services for adults with some disability. Restructured employment services, investing more resources in those with more complex problems.

The subtext is that passive welfare is a malaise that must be tackled. Welfare reform and workforce participation go together; linked by the dignity of hard work.

In the speech Gillard claims that there are 230,000 people who have been unemployed for more than two years and 250,000 families where no adult has been working for at least one year. Gillard says:

Relying on welfare to provide opportunity is no longer the right focus for our times. Our strong economy gives us a real chance to create opportunity from the cradle to the grave.The problem of long term welfare dependency has been long discussed but the new realities of our economy create quite a different policy environment from the recovery of the 1990s or the growth of the last decade. Because we have unprecedented demand for skills and labour, this is possible. In today’s economy, inclusion through participation must be our central focus. It’s not right to leave people on welfare and deny them access to opportunity.And every Australian should pull his or her own weight. It’s not fair for taxpayers to pay for someone who can support themselves.

Will this appeal to Labor's heartland and help to stop the drift to the Abbott Liberals? Is that the politics of the 2011 Budget?

There is next to nothing in Gillard's speech about productivity, ie., working smarter rather than working harder or longer. Working smarter means better education for those whose work skills have deteriorated, or never existed in the first place.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 30, 2011

Tanner on gotcha

I have yet to read Lindsay Tanner's Sideshow: Dumbing down democracy. This text, from what I gather, describes contemporary politics in terms how the media and the politicians and even the electorate have caused the dumbing of down politics to a series of sound bites and robotic performances, where focus groups set the direction. Politics is a carnival sideshow.

In an interview with The Age Tanner says:

When I got into Parliament and throughout most of the '80s and into the '90s, right across the political spectrum, people were on about big issues, big ideas, big battles. That era seems to have passed and we have descended into this world of announceables and gimmicks and stunts and I really believe the two prevailing rules of political behaviour now are: one, look like you're doing something; and, two, don't offend anyone who matters.So you end up in this kind of faux politics, where basically people are pretending, or they're actually acting out roles in many areas and the content of the challenge is sidestepped because the price that would be paid for tackling a serious challenge is just too high...

Tanner's central thesis is that the media-politician relationship has become a damaging vicious circle: the media turns politics into entertainment, the politicians, knowing what's good for them, give in kind, and the results are public cynicism and often bad decisions. Politics defaults to politics as a sport and it has drifted into a really tawdry, low-rent space.

His argument is that political habits have been modified and attuned to a changing media environment, and that the gotcha mentality (with its loaded questions) results in politicians always being backed into corners where they play it safe and defensive to avoid the media talk of gaffes, splits, person x attacks person y etc. So they are forced to play the media's game.

In conversation with Andrew Jaspan Tanner says that the media are the oxygen of politics and politicians, without that oxygen politicians die, they do not exist. Politicians have a very limited choice in the new media landscape:

Politicians live or die by access to those media, but the terms on which they get access are not within their control and therefore inevitably they make choices, and some try to shape how it works more than others and inevitably they make choices designed to maximize their appearance in that media and their positive image in that media.

This media dumbing down is why politicians behave the way they do. Politicians are unavoidably captive to the media because without the media they don’t exist and nobody knows who they are and what they’re on about.

The political is ceasing to be about the content of big issues and big arguments and different points of view about the future of the country, and it is becoming this game where you have this toxic interaction between media and politicians.It's an accurate account, even if a little light on the way the politicians have acted to hollow the political over and above their response to media as entertainment.

The Canberra Press Gallery, who just want Tanner to do a kiss and tell, ain't going to like the criticism but they will find it harder to dismiss Tanner than Latham.

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March 22, 2011

ALP: writing the obituary

The Canberra Press Gallery is starting to write the obituary of the Gillard Government and that of the ALP. Are there interpretations plausible?

For instance, Glenn Milne addresses the issue of the Gillard Government when he writes at the ABC's Unleashed that with 'Gillard battling on many fronts, Liberals dare to hope, for the first time since the Labor minority government was formed, that Julia Gillard's first term in her own right may be her last.' He adds:

This is not to say they now believe the Government will not go full term. To the contrary, there is a grudging recognition that the dreams of an early implosion between Gillard and the independents she relies on to govern were misplaced. It's just that senior Liberals now believe Gillard's prime ministership may be terminal, a fate that will become clear at the time of the next election.

There is a growing belief among senior Liberals, he concludes, that Gillard's eroded legitimacy may be fatal to her re-election chances.

From my perspective Milne's columns on the ABC's Unleashed are basically him writing publicity for the Liberal Party. They tell us little more than what senior Liberals are thinking about the current state of play in politics. The content is mostly about hope.

Peter Hartcher prefers to make his own judgements. In the Sydney Morning Herald he says:

The Prime Minister is like someone under a death sentence, carrying on breezily as if everything is normal. Let's be realistic. As things stand, Labor cannot hope to govern in its own right any more.....As a party able to offer itself as a viable government, Labor is not just under existential threat. It is finished. Unless, of course, it can engineer an extraordinary resurgence. Labor's looming death as a stand-alone political entity is the biggest story in contemporary Australian politics.

His thesis is that the ALP has self-destructed as the party of the progressive vote. Even if Gillard can win passage of a carbon tax through the Parliament, it will not be enough to save her, and Labor, from oblivion.

Let us accept that Labor cannot govern in its right any more---the coalition of ALP and Greens in the ACT and Tasmania gives us the reasons for accepting this part of Hartcher's thesis. What then of his oblivion claim?

Hartcher doesn't address the possibility of a coalition between ALP and Greens at a federal level. Hasn't the ALP depended on Greens preferences to be competitive since the 1980s? If the ALP cannot win elections with a vote in the mid-30s, then it needs some sort of an alliance with the Greens.

Hartcher is ambivalent here. On the one hand, the alliance possibility is sidelined on the grounds that the Right faction is dominant within Labor and it has no interest in moving left to appeal to progressive voters. On the other hand, Hartcher acknowledges this possibility with his claim that Labor has yet to squarely confront the fact that it is on track to bring the two-party system to an end as Australia witnesses the rise of a three-party system.

We already three-party system---eg., Liberals, National and ALP. Nay, the political landscape has changed so that we actually have a four-party system: Liberals, National, ALP and Greens. How does that constitute Labor's oblivion--that Labor is finished? Nobody seriously claims that the Liberals are finished because they are required to form a coalition with the Nationals. Why the ALP then?

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March 3, 2011

public debate in Australia

This is the contribution by SA Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher in the Australian Senate to the public debate about the Gillard Government's adoption of a carbon price to begin the process of reducing greenhouse emissions. It gives an support to those Australian citizens with some knowledge and understanding of public policy criticizing some politicians for being hollow.

The Gillard Government's carbon pricing policy is open to criticism from a number of perspectives. Alan Kohler in Business Spectator, for instance, says:

Just as Howard repainted the Liberals’ brand with a tinge of xenophobia in 2001, Julia Gillard is now slapping green paint on Labor’s logo.That is intention No.1 of the carbon tax. Intention No.2 is to raise an almighty barrel of pork for the 2013 election. Call me cynical, but I would say carbon abatement is intention No. 3 on the PM’s list, with daylight between two and three.

He says that Julia Gillard’s target in declaring war on carbon taxation is not the Coalition, but the Greens.The ALP’s greatest threat comes from erosion of its base by Bob Brown’s Greens. If that continues, Labor’s future as an independent political force looks very dim.

So the cash raised from the tax is going to be spent to help out the battlers and working poor and not the high income households. Cynical yes, but an argument worth considering.

Senator Mary Jo Fisher, in contrast, does not have a substantive argument. It's more akin to a comedy routine in the Adelaide Fringe, not a debate about public policy in the Senate, which is committed to deliberation and public reason on public issues.

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February 11, 2011

CoAG and national health reform

Paul McClintock, the chairman of the CoAG Reform Council, has pointed out that COAG's role had changed in the past two decades - from being ''an occasional summit meeting of domestic political leadership'' to being charged with ''the paramount leadership role in the federation, including detailed oversight of the implementation of federally agreed programs''.

CoAG's policy goal is to use deregulatory and competition reform to create a seamless national economy in an attempt to drive productivity growth. The states have been dragging their heels on this and ending the federal-state blame game by stopping the blurring of ''who is responsible for what''.

The co-operative federalism under Rudd is giving away to a competitive federalism under Gillard as more and more state governments dump Labor for Liberal--WA, Victoria and shortly NSW. That means an a shift away from centralized authority; an emphasis on decentralization and local control; the rejection of mandatory conformity; introducing essential features of the market into politics; limiting the central government to the carrying out of protective or minimal state functions.

You can see the shift in health reform. Rudd had hammered out a deal to take about 30 per cent of the states' GST money to pay for an increase in federal funding of hospitals from about 40 per cent to 60 per cent. He also promised a big injection of extra Commonwealth money for growth in health spending. Gillard has ditched the bid for the GST and making the Commonwealth the dominant funder of health. The current strategy is to the states is for the growth money (now at least $16.5 billion) in exchange for the reforms.

What kind of reforms? The talk is about shifting the priority to a greater emphasis on primary and community care rather than hospitals; the commonwealth is proposing to take over the bulk of primary care services through the network of Medicare Locals; and the commonwealth will directly fund local groups of doctors and other health professionals to boost primary healthcare.

It appears that this involves measures to ensure that patients will find it easier to access local doctors after hours from July and the number of government-funded primary health services will increase.Patients will be given information about where they can find these health services, their opening hours will be publicised and the government will report on patient outcomes and rates of preventable hospitalisations. The government will also publish the rates of chronic disease in each community.

Update1
What was agreed to at CoAG was a financial (funding) package--centred around hospitals not a health package centred around primary care and consumers (ie., bringing allied health, dental and mental health care into primary care) and breaking the near-monopoly of Medicare funding by GP's.

Secondly, it is unclear how the Medicare Locals connect with the local hospital networks, the individual primary care providers, community health, and provide quality care in the absence of substantial funding. It would appear that Medicare Locals do not have the levers to turn this analysis of needs and primary care services done at a local level into action and improved services.

Tony McBride, the chairman of the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance, accurately sums up the significance of CoAG's health announcements:

Yesterday's COAG health announcements were not health reform. They do ensure that the Commonwealth will share the cost equally of hospital growth funding, somewhat improving the long-term sustainability of the hospital system. But the agreements will not do more to prevent people getting sick, and they will not do more to treat people early and support them with their chronic diseases in the community. Such moves would have decreased the number of people needing to go to hospital. That would have been health reform.

He adds that the most significant announcement is what is not there – it appears the Commonwealth will no longer take responsibility for funding all of primary health care. This loses the crucial opportunity to create a single (more rational and fair) primary health care system in Australia.

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January 31, 2011

politics as usual

The political year is in swing and the partisan rhetoric from the political noise machines is being cranked up. The blustering Nationals continue to denounce the Gillard Government for its failure to adopt the politics of austerity whilst continuing to hammer the government by demanding more handouts for regional Australia. Hammer hammer hammer.

Behind the ever increasing noise the tactic looks as if the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott is only going to amplify his style of opposing everything to make life for the government as tough as possible. The Coalition's belief is that the fall of Gillard is inevitable.

The strategy is for Abbott to be prime minister by the end of this year without facing an election and so the Coalition will make the life of the regional Independents---Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor--- as difficult as possible. Destroy them and the Gillard Government falls. Hammer, hammer hammer. Labor throws environmental programs overboard when the going gets tough in order to save its bacon.

We'd better get used to the noise about the incompetent, hopeless, useless Gillard Government, because there is going to be plenty of it. For instance in The Australian Mirko Bagaric, a professor at Deakin University, runs through the right wing talking points:

The only sound response to the flood damage is to defer or scrap other spending programs, especially non-essential items such as the National Broadband Network...the flood impost is exactly what you would expect from a government that has lost its way. One thing that is clear is that for the country to move forward for the benefit of working families, a fundamental shift is necessary in the approach to government policy delivery. That is not likely to happen under Gillard's stewardship.

The rhetoric around the NBN from the conservative noise machine is becoming ever more extreme as it goes way beyond the standard concerns about the internet. Bagaric adds that:

Gillard's only big-ticket item, the NBN, highlights her inadequacies. Governments should never use our taxes for projects that they can't prove will be good for us.It is not clear whether the internet is doing more harm than good to the human species. But what is incontestable is that it is a luxury, and that it is quick enough at present to accommodate all useful applications.Sure, the internet provides quicker access to information, but it has several disadvantages, many of which are just starting to emerge.

These are: most internet use relates to email, (anti-)social networking sites and trash searches, including music videos and porn; it is retrograde from a work and health perspective since online technologies make workers contactable 24/7, breaking the separation between work and family and social life; there are no positive educational outcomes as research suggests the internet is probably making us dumber etc etc.

What we have is an academic opposing an information economy and recycling old work. Bagariuc concludes on this note:

Gillard's persistence with her fanatical plan force us to pay $2000 each to improve a tool that makes us more stressed, dumber, fatter and less healthy is the ultimate proof that she is incapable of making decisions that have positive outcomes in the real world.

I presume that Bagariuc used the internet to send his opinion piece to The Australian to be published, and he is quite happy for us to read his pearls of wisdom online using the internet. The contradictions don't matter, do they? It's just hammer hammer hammer.

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January 21, 2011

the same old mantra

The Coalition continue to remain policy light with naught to say on reform. Everything, it seems, can be solved by the dual policy of reducing taxes and cutting government expenditure.

Their response to the Queensland and Victorian floods, for instance, is to cut government spending to pay for the damage bill. The areas they have select for cutting are the national broadband network, and they propose selling off Medibank Private. It's the same old small government agenda of slashing wasteful public expenditure, even though they were all for big Government during their decade in power. Nothing at all is said about reform with respect to development on the floodplain or providing access to a universal affordable insurance for natural disasters.

So what does the Coalition have to say about future building in flood prone areas apart from building more and more dams? Does the Coalition actually reckon that it is economic madness to subsidize people's risk taking behavior in building/buying on a known flood plain?

Presumably they reckon the old tactic of attack attack is going to work, even though the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate in 5 months time.

Yet the cost the burden rebuilding imposes on taxpayers--it looks like a levy will be introduced--- would obviously be smaller had a greater share of the assets been properly insured and tn greater detailed information about flood-proneness had been made public. Why not say something about that given the history of the failure of the Brisbane City Council to provide public information about future flood levels in its commissioned reports?

As things stand in the 'leave it to the market scenario' householders face the choice to either pay the high premium, take the risk without it, or move to places that won't flood. Levies (ie., taxes) are not the answer for the free market right who hang out in The Australian as the issue is one of responsibility in a world of risk.

The argument appears to be this. Making insurance compulsory is a form of subsidisation as the properties with no flood exposure would pay a premium component and subsidise the exposed properties. Why should those who live in the non-flood areas pay a levy to help those who do live on the flood plain? Why should their taxes go to free handouts to flood victims who did not have insurance or who opted out of a higher cover in favour of cheaper policies. And lets bash the Greens whilst we on the topic. It is fun.

This argument effectively denies the idea of market failure.

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January 19, 2011

it's back to politics

The political holiday season is slowly coming to an end.

We have the Coalition finding yet another reason to attack the national broadband network (NBN) and have it scrapped. Abbott says that since the NBN is an unnecessary project--- a luxury that Australia cannot now afford---the money (its been inflated to $50 billion by the Coalition) should be diverted to the flood recovery in Queensland.

Why not cut money from defence if the priority is to save the budget surplus from an increase in expenditure? There are lots of efficiency savings to be made there. Why not roll back expenditure in the subsidy to private health insurance?

These are not goers for the Coalition--they'd block them in the Senate --- because Abbott is not interested in the budget surplus; he is using the floods to try to undermine a policy that is seen to both popular and successful for the ALP. So mud has to be thrown at it, in the hope that some of it sticks, whilst Abbott ensures the austerity (slash and burn) credentials remain with the Coalition. It's politics: --keeping Labor inside the big spender/high taxation box.

We have the Gillard Government's commitment to return to surplus by 2012-13 to be achieved by capping extra spending at 2%b real growth and banking the increased revenue revisions. If this commitment is locked in concrete---to avoid a Deficit--- then whyy not a temporary flood levy? That is what Howard did when he introduced a levy to fund a $500 million gun buyback in 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre. No doubt the Coalition will say cut spending not raise taxes.

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December 31, 2010

The Australian's hammer

The Australian's editorial--- The politics of vacillation is holding back the nation --hammers out the standard News Corp message about a weak Labor government not knowing where its going or it standing for anything substantial by way of substantive reform.

This message or agenda is hammered because we get little by way of an argument. You get get impression that, since the Australian is basically talking to itself about itself, there is no need for an argument. It has well developed ideas about what Australia needs and it routinely hammers away at an insular leftish culture that is out of touch with the values of mainstream society which it supposedly represents. The editorial says:

It has been the year of indecision for Australia, cocooned from the economic problems of Europe and the US but complacent about the nation's future. Weak political leadership and a lack of vision was greeted with ambivalence by voters...A resources boom and strong economic growth cloaked a policy vacuum as our politicians enjoyed a reform holiday the nation could not afford. At year's end, the country's political class is all but deadlocked, with a minority Labor government in Canberra still trying to navigate its way around a Greens agenda obsessing on 10th-order issues rather than the substantive productivity, infrastructure and tax reforms so vital to our future.

What then are the substantive productivity, infrastructure and tax reforms necessary for the nation's future prosperity? Strangely, the editorial doesn't say.

What it says is this:

The government must start governing according to what the country needs, not what focus group studies claim it wants... While $31 million buys our elected representatives a lot of data, it cannot overcome a policy paralysis born of disconnection with the electorate and a lack of courage in implementing essential reforms.The second lesson of the year is that governments have limits, and we cannot continue subcontracting tasks to bureaucrats that they are incapable of performing...Governments play a crucial role in setting economic policies and broad directions for defence and for delivery of essential services, but we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that governments are omnipotent...a nation's achievements are built on the enterprise of its people and it is from their labours, not the work of governments, that growth and prosperity will flow.

There is no content at all about the substantive productivity, infrastructure and tax reforms so vital to our future that would facilitate the enterprise of the Australian people and their labours that build economic economic growth and prosperity?

it doesn't even bother to engage with the Gillard Government's spelling out that substantive productivity reforms will be achieved through investment in education and training to lift skill levels in the work force; its proposals to enhance infrastructure; CoAG's agenda for a "seamless" national economy etc etc. What we are offered is little more than office gossip in the form of commentary about its editorial line.

The Australian is talking to itself about itself.

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November 30, 2010

The ALP's political malady

One of the current themes in the mainstream media is the ALP's soul search for its lost identity. This mostly comes from the Murdoch press. They says that since becoming a minority government the ALP has lost its way, and it doesn't know what it stands for. Of course, they have plenty of advice: federal Labor needs to shift to the right.

Many in the ALP concur: Labor has lost its basic Labor values. So they have gone off looking for them. Michael Costa, who has been silent of late, amplifies this theme in his Reform the cure for Labor's ills in The Australian Literary Review. He replays the Labor Right's main meme to cure the ALP's supposed identity crisis: federal Labor must confront the Greens to save the Labor Party and stop practising the politics of appeasement with the far-Left.

For Costa The Greens have a pathological antipathy to capitalism and inherent contempt for the principles of sound public finance. Their mantra is that things would be much better if Labor just stopped selling out to the capitalist system and its vested interests. The Greens, along with the rest of the Left, are addicted to describing any policy that doesn't strictly conform to their world view of greater government intervention as being neo-liberal.

The Greens' strategy is to always try to wedge Labor. Costa says:

The Greens need to be confronted rather than appeased. This is precisely why federal Labor's political deal with the Greens is so damaging.Gillard and her advisers have, by formalising a political agreement with the Greens, unnecessarily and irresponsibly legitimised them in the eyes of many ill-informed voters as a credible political force. In short, Gillard has made a damaging political blunder that will haunt the party for many years to come.

He says that most traditional Labor voters are not supporters of the Greens' policies. The Greens' policies on a range of issue, from taxation to law and order, would horrify that base---because the Greens are deemed to be far-Left, extremist, anti-capitalist and anathema to middle Australia. In short, Gillard has made a damaging political blunder that will haunt the party for many years to come.

The ALP, in standing up to The Greens, needs to return to the core economic and social principles that allowed Hawke and Keating to propel the Australian economy along a path of economic and social prosperity and embrace the successful Hawke-Keating model of economic liberalisation and continuous micro-economic reform. What Costa means by reform is economic reform interpreted as smaller government, welfare cuts, deregulated industrial relations and lower taxes. He probably would include a larger population. So speaks the NSW Right.

The core problem with Costa's account is that he ignores--makes no mention of -- the reform attempt by Rudd Labor to shift Australia to a low carbon economy by using market mechanisms to drive change through an emissions trading scheme. The ALP was supported in that by the Greens, until the ALP was captured by the power and coal industry, lowered the targets and price on carbon, and subsidised the polluters.

Costa opposed the shift to a low carbon economy, was a climate change denialist, and was only interested in privatising the NSW power stations. He had no interest in reform in the Murray-Darling Basin, was opposed to investing in urban public transport and could only see the negatives in increasing the energy efficiency of the built environment.

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November 26, 2010

Gillard + Co: an uphill struggle

I've been watching Question Time off and on in the last fortnight in the context of both the anti-Labor bashing by the Murdoch Press' echo chamber (“Labor has no vision” or “Labor stands for nothing”, or "Labor lacks direction") and Australia’s two-party system being over.

I wanted to see how a minority Gillard government is dealing with a situation in which the power of the executive is counterbalanced by the power of Parliament in which members have more power to put different issues on the agenda. The Green did this with gay marriage and euthanasia, and this will become more pronounced when the Greens command the balance of power in the Senate from July next year.

In his 'The leader who needs to get a grip' column in last weekends AFR Geoff Kitney says that the assertion of Green power poses a big problem for the Gillard Government:

The Greens are likely to cause headaches for Gillard by imposing on her issues that appeal to sections of the Labor Party but which risk alienating more conservative traditional labor voters and voters in the uncommitted centre. This presents Gillard with arguably her greatest challenge--to find a way to stop the bleeding of Labor support to the Greens without capitulating to them and losing the vital political middle ground ... But how to deal with the threat posed by by the erosion of Labor support to the Greens is a question that deeply divides federal Labor.

For Wayne Swan, launching All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane, the ALP stands for prosperity and opportunity (meaning economic growth and social mobility) rather than the in fringe issues of the far left. Swan assumes that social mobility is always upwards--everyone gets a better job.

Climate change and the shift to a low carbon economy left wing fringe issue? Is water reform in the Murray-Darling basin a left wing fringe issue?

Swan's gospel of getting on offers a rather thin account of social democracy: --social mobility is what characterises a fair society, rather than a particular level of income equality. If social mobility is the way to civilize capitalism, then defining 'fairness' as social mobility (rather than as reduced income inequality) leaves the Greens defending the mainstream social liberal tradition.

Kitney, in his 'The leader who needs to get a grip' column in the AFR goes on to say that the Gillard Government is fighting on another front from a confident and emboldened Abbott and the Coalition:

Abbott and his team are increasingly convinced that Gillard will fail to meet he challenge [of how to assert the authority of prime ministership without the authority of Parliament]--- and are seizing every opportunity presented to them to reinforce the perception that she is a weak leader without a clear vision and a coherent reform agenda. tactically, the opposition is consistently out-thinking and out-manoeuvring the government.

Abbott and the Coalition still stand for three-word slogans: ‘end the waste’, ‘pay back debt’, ‘stop new taxes’ and ‘stop the boats’, but this matters less than the unremitting negativity that attempts to make like so difficult for the minority Gillard Government so that its support provided by the Independents splinters and cracks. They have able to consolidate their base and to convince most right-of-centre voters that Labor is not competent to hold office.

The Coalition still reckons that there is a good chance of this happening next year. I doubt it myself. The self-interest of the Independents is to ensure the stability of the Gillard Government as it provides them with the platform they need to further their agenda for regional Australia---- and that is more than the Coalition's ‘end the waste’, ‘pay back debt’, ‘stop new taxes’ and ‘stop the boats’.

Despite all the pressure applied by the conservatives (ie., the Murdoch Press and Coalition) on the national broadband network no splinters and cracks have appeared and a digital economy is now emerging.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 5, 2010

a 'Tea Party' in Australia?

Angry white Americans make good media copy, especially when they are fronted by suburban housewives with the attitude of Mama grizzlies, and backed by big Republican money. The angry Americans are the majorities of white men and women, suburbanites and older Americans whose nostalgia is for a lost America, and whose often cynical and fearful view of the future is coloured by this sense of loss.

Martin Rowson

Martin Kettle in his Boris Johnson could be the Sarah Palin of a British Tea Party in The Guardian says that the Tea Party:

stands for individualism, libertarianism, low taxes and small government. It is nationalistic, overwhelmingly white and not interested in the rest of the world, which it views as a hostile force. An insurrectionary party of that kind – stripped of the distinctively American aspects like guns, capital punishment and cultural conservatism – is surely at least conceivable in a British and European context. In fact, such parties exist in most European countries already, albeit on the margins. In this country Ukip comes quite close to this template, and it shares a lot of ground with parts of the Tory party.

And is surely conceivable in Australia. The nationalistic, overwhelmingly white strand is most obvious in those opposed, to and deeply hostile towards, refugees and to they two new asylum seeker detention facilities in Western Australia and South Australia. They advocate Fortress Australia in their desire to restore a lost Australia.

Kettle adds that if we imagine a British Tea Party as an off-the-peg American franchise we are asking the wrong question. The cultures are too different. Similarly with Australia. However, the roots are there in older Australia in the form of right wing populism, that is socially conservative, is hostile to an out-of-touch and corrupt Canberra elite, and is backed by the strong media presence and support of News Ltd.

These conservative populists---ethnic whites and older and working class men and women-- dislike unwelcome change and desire restoration, are susceptible to the Coalition's opposition to the process of transformation, which they see as being driven The Greens (the enemy within). The Coalition is doing its best to stir them up.

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July 16, 2010

Canberra watch: Gillard's retreat

Julia Gillard's speech to the National Press Club was designed to show Gillard's record as a reformer in education and industrial relations and to point to the future reforms. I found it disappointing in understanding what "moving forward" slogan stands for policy wise. Moving forward to where?

Most of the Canberra Press Gallery commentary is about the Laurie Oaks bomb (based on a leak from Rudd) that reminds us of the nature of Australian politics.

In her speech Gillard says that the upcoming campaign will have strong elements of ‘clean' and ‘green' but above all else it will be very lean. So how will moving forward to clean and green be delivered, given that Gillard says that the context of heightened global uncertainty caused by the global financial crisis time for prudent and careful economic management. She adds:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Labor Governments led economic reform by recognising that in changing global conditions, only an open, market-driven economy could prosper. That meant floating the dollar, reducing tariffs, ensuring wage restraint and implementing sweeping competition policy reforms. But as conditions change again, we need more than economic stability to ensure future prosperity. We need active reforms to improve Australia's ability to compete, to make sure that all our assets are utilised productively, and to make the most of our value-adding capacity.

She adds that the sectors which may need renewal and reform are often those that were relatively untouched by the Hawke-Keating reforms - sectors like health and education that meet essential public needs, delivered largely within the domestic economy. There was no mention of energy at all.

The strategy is this:

As far as I am concerned, there is no inherent superiority in a public sector or a private sector provider – certainly not on ideological grounds. The challenge is not whether to combine public and private resources in these essential sectors, but how best to do it.Simply applying the extreme free-market medicine of liberalisation and privatisation without thought or care is not a solution. Maintaining an instinctive hostility towards the public sector and all it provides is equally wrong...the microeconomic challenges of the future are not a simplistic choice between the market and the state, but the more sophisticated challenges of market design so that we bring public and private resources together to deliver better services and increased productivity.

Despite the mention of strong elements of lean and green nothing was said about addressing climate change. The goal of public policy is increased prosperity and fairness.There was one mention of a sustainable economy being a goal:

Economic reform should benefit families, boost national prosperity, enable more Australians to enjoy the dignity of work and deliver a more competitive and sustainable economy. Over time, there should be a virtuous cycle between investment in human capital and resilient communities and economic growth.

The emphasis in the speech was on prosperity---advancing an agenda that moves Australia forward to a more productive, modern Australian economy; one whose dividend to Australians is better quality services, better quality jobs, more competitive firms, a better quality of life and greater financial security for the future. This is old Labor. It has little interest in making the shift to a low carbon economy. It is conservative Labor --- exemplified by Gillard's educational reforms which were about testing students not fostering critical thinking.

Labor has retreated from using the market as a mechanism to address greenhouse gas emissions. Gillard says that what matters is:

methodically working to create the conditions in which markets serve the public interest through vigorous competition, transparent information, the freedom to make choices and a responsiveness to the needs of service users.

Using markets to serve the public interest has been rejected in terms of climate change and making the polluters pay for their greenhouse emissions.

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July 9, 2010

Canberra watch: political housekeeping

I've noticed that Julie Gillard, our new fang dangle PM, has been doing a bit of policy housekeeping in Canberra this last week or so --cleaning up the "dirty" issues that have been hurting federal Labor in the electorate, such as the mining tax and asylum seekers. The leaks say that the global warming issue will be cleaned up too--pushed under the carpet?

Get these slow burns off the agenda and the ALP sails home to a famous victory. Clever politics says the Canberra Press Gallery. The ALP was justified in removing a badly performing Rudd.

The trajectory of this kind of housekeeping is a marked shift to the Right: appease the multinational miners on the resources tax; appease the angry right wing populists on asylum seekers; and doing a bit of green wash on climate change (its real folks) to keep the ALP looking credible--- ie., not looking as if its been well and truely captured by the coal industry.

Clever tactics says the Canberra Gallery. This pushes the Coalition further to the right (so that Abbott looks extreme) and allows the ALP to stand firmly in the middle ground. This political strategy will ensure that the Gillard Government is elected.

That middle ground looks to be well inside the right of centre territory to me. The clearest indication of that is the reaffirmation that the mandatory internet filter to protect families will remain. What is rejected is education, policing of illegal material and targeted research on the internet and young people.This indicates politics not policy, a politics designed for those Christian populists who feel besieged by rapid change, and who talk about the threats to moral purity and the need to protect the family from “worldly dangers.”

They have, as Gillard put it, a set of concerns about the dark side of the new technology. The images of child abuse, child pornography are everywhere on the internet. This is not clever politics---it indicates that social conservatism is the heart of the ALP. That is what "western Sydney " as Labor heartland means.

For the Canberra Press Gallery, many of whom see themselves and each other as "players" in the "game" we now call politics, what matters is not the policy substance; rather it is the 24-hour contest between our political leaders to win the media on the day. John Hewson describes the politics this way in his Fourth Estate corrupting the political system at the ABC's The Drum:

This is a game where "winning" is everything, and where, increasingly, policy substance, values, ideas and ideologies don't matter. Where personalities, and "colour" and "movement" dominate, and where ability to "sell" or "spin", rather than merit or substance, are more valued and determinate.

What we have with this 24-hour politics of glitz and spin Hewson adds, are two candidates, devoid of real policy substance, claiming to "lead" us on significant moral issues, such as asylum seekers and climate change.

This leadership stuff is spin. We can decode that easily during an election. Only, now we know that once Gillard Labor regains power, they will not pick up the reform baton in in any substantive way, thanks to the heavy hand of the NSW Right. Federal Labor will spend most of its energy putting the brakes on the reform's required to adapt Australia to a rapidly changing world and improve the well being of the Australian population.

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June 25, 2010

Canberra watch: cutting deals

The dust has settled in Canberra, Parliament has taken a longish break and the Canberra Press Gallery is beavering away exploring every nuance of the mechanisms behind, and the reasons for, the Labor regicide.

The justification that Rudd Labor had "lost its way" provides fertile ground for interpretation, especially when the coup was organized by the power brokers and machine men of the Right faction (in Victoria, NSW and SA). Their poll driven agenda is a much tougher line on asylum seekers, a more low key approach to climate change, and rolling over on the mining tax.

Gillard's style will be different from Rudd's --more team play, common courtesy, consultation and negotiation. More chairperson of the Board than a dictatorial CEO.

If Rudd's execution was about the ALP retaining power, then the question comes: Can Gillard and Swan turn Labor's electoral slide around? They need to raise the ALP's primary vote and that can't be done on personal popularity, even if great expectations and high hopes rest on Gillard's shoulders.

Policy issues will have to come into play to raise the ALP's primary vote. Is there policy substance and direction? Is there a reform direction?

Can Gillard, Swan and Ferguson cut a deal with the miners? Gillard will presene herself asa listening and consultative leader. If they can cut a deal, then Abbott has lost his favourite punching bag, and is in danger of losing his key issue, the mining tax. The coalition has gone out on a limb for the big miners--- no new tax on miners (its gouging and ripoff) because the miners stand for risk, enterprise and incentive and are necessary to develop this country. Do the miners actually want to negotiate and compromise?

Mentioning the phrase 'we need to price carbon' in a never never future will not be enough for green orientated voters to return to Labor. Some kind of policy is needed, given Labor's history of being captured by the coal industry and heavy polluters on the emission trading scheme. The latter have no interest at all in paying for their carbon emissions.

Update
Stephen Bartholomeusz in Business Spectator says:

Gillard can’t ditch the tax and start again, nor concede the key changes to the tax demanded by the sector – in particular its retrospective application to past investment – without destroying Swan, which isn’t going to happen. Which suggests that, however genuine Gillard might be about wanting to negotiate, she actually doesn’t have any meaningful room to manoeuvre on the issues that really matter....Unless Gillard is prepared to negotiate both the headline rate and the retrospective nature of the tax she is boxed in by the political framework and the continuing presence of Swan.

Her desire to negotiate a compromise might be genuine but the practical realities of her position make that near-impossible.

Update 2
Leaks to the press (The Australian Financial Review) suggest that the federal government has approved a compromise offer on the controversial resource super profits tax (RSPT) and presented the plan to key mining firms for their feedback.The offer would reduce the impact of the RSPT by offering some exemptions on existing projects, as well as raising the level when the tax cuts in from the proposed six per cent. It would see an immediate write-off for new capital expenditure and allow for the taxing point to be set as close as possible to extraction.

Although the miners continue to say that the proposed mining tax threatens more than $23 billion in investment no major project has yet been scrapped and several have actually been advanced. The miners continue to threaten a restart of their campaign against the Gillard Government if they don't get what they want in a couple of weeks.

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June 24, 2010

a quick execution

Rudd's execution happened rather quick and it caught people by surprise, including me. I knew that Rudd was on the nose (in caucus and the electorate), that Labor (the backbench) was anxious about the bad polling, and that cabinet resented the overly bureaucratic Rudd as leader.

They resented Rudd's leadership style, the concentration of power in his personal office and the sidelining of cabinet and the factions and the caucus, but were resigned to it. But they feared going down with Rudd.

I thought that the media's talk of leadership challenge in the last week was speculation. I hadn't realized that Rudd's NSW rightwing faction had deserted him on mass because of his electoral unpopularity. Changing leaders, based on focus group polling, is the NSW Right's tactics par excellence.

Now Rudd's throat has been being slit without any blood being spilled (Rudd stood down) and close to an election--probably this October. Amazing how things change so quick. Sometimes it only takes a spark? Or the coup was long planned and Rudd's technocratic leadership had been under threat for weeks. He was damaged and increasingly seen as the hollow man. The factions judged that he had to be executed.

Will Rudd stay on in Cabinet? Will he return to the old position of foreign affairs? Was that his price for standing down and doing the right thing for his party?

From the ALP's perspective, Gillard is seen to provide the vital boost necessary to restore Labor's chances of victory at the next election. They have a better chance of holding government with Gillard that they would have with Rudd would have been their judgement.

I doubt that Labor will shift much from its pro-business and centre-right populist policies, even though Gillard is seen as the saviour of the ALP. We still have the dead hand of the NSW Right.

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June 17, 2010

Canberra watch: the mining tax "disaster"

As Peter Brent at Mumble says the media's judgements about how a political party is “travelling” rest almost solely on the latest published opinion polls. The polls (Newspoll, ACNielsen, etc) are saying that Rudd Labor is in a bad way and that Abbott's Coalition has the rising momentum. The media are full of leadership speculation.

I watched Question Time all this week (whilst listening to some interesting music ) to assess the state of play amongst the parties in the context of the polls, and my judgement is that the Coalition did not do that well. The attack on the Resources Super Profits Tax looked oomph by the end of the week ---it run out of ammo---and the questions that increasingly replaced those on the RSPT were all over the place and lacked discipline.

The momentum in Question Time slowly turned the government's way. That leaves the noisy, outraged miners:

The consensus in the media is that the Rudd Government is being hammered, if not on the ropes, and it needs to cut a deal quick to save its political skin. It has already lost WA--to all intents and purposes--- and the Queensland marginals look decidedly shaky.

Is this the case?

The leaks from the negotiations indicate that the points at issue are to do with the transitional arrangements rather than dumping the tax. That has been the Rudd Government's position from day 1 and Big Mining, in spite of all the sound and fury of their media campaign, has not been able to shift that. So much for 'trash the tax'.

So it comes down to the issues at play in the negotiations---what BHP Billiton calls the three fundamental areas of concern with the Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT):

1. the tax should not apply to existing projects
2. the effective tax rate should be one that ''retains Australia's international competitiveness''.
3. Stability arrangements for taxes and royalties for existing and new projects.

The royalty regime is to be replaced by the tax on super profits. The issue of Australia's international competitiveness is a furphy since the miners will stay here as long as there is a big demand for the iron ore and coal from China and other countries will shift to tax on profits regime.

So that leaves the first issue to be worked through. Big mining are demanding that Rudd and Swan give substantial ground on the retrospective elements of the tax. All the threats and hysteria--eg., in South Australia Whyalla will close down + Olympic Dam won't go ahead etc ---are directed at forcing the government to give substantial ground. All the leaks suggest that the transitional arrangements will be modified to get the tax regime right, not to roll over for the miners.

The miners, who are doing very well in the resources boom, are currently reduced to arguing that "uncertainity" is damaging their economic interests. Of course, they continue to equate their interest with Australia's national economic interest. Many others do not make that equation.

Update
Laurie Oaks in the Herald Sun says that he thinks that people have switched off, and if that is the case, nothing Rudd does will help. He adds:

We are now well past the point of acknowledging that there's a chance Labor could lose what not so long ago looked like an unloseable election.If next week's Newspoll confirms the depth of Labor's slump, the brutal truth is that the Rudd Government is very likely gone.

He adds that Labor is preparing itself for defeat and some of the more seasoned warriors believe it is unavoidable.

Rudd, to me, looks more and more like one of the hollowmen.

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May 22, 2010

Leunig: lies + truth

Tony Abbott confessed on The 7.30 Report that he sometimes said things in the heat of battle that he had reason later to regret and to amend. Or that what he said contradicted his previous positions. Abbott was stating the obvious about politicians like himself: they often lie to get themselves out of sticky situations.

Hence the honesty defence argued for by Terry Barnes in The Age:--Abbott was actually an honest voice in a political sea of spin, deception and broken promises.

However, the issue goes deeper to the relationship of trust between politicians and the electorate in a liberal democracy. The base position is that all politicians lie just like advertisers. Hence they are distrusted, just like used car salesmen.

Barnes recognizes that this is a bad situation for liberal democracy to be in and adds:

If we tolerate a political culture in which it's normal to say and do whatever it takes to win and hold power, we need to not just criticise and condemn those politicians falling short of perfection, but take a very hard look at ourselves and ask if we're encouraging them by our own indifference.

Our indifference? With used car salesmen we employ a mechanic to check the car before we buy it. Who do we have to check up on the deliberate deceptions of the motley crew of politicians?

The media has traditionally said that it was the watchdog for democracy that would ensure citizens would have the information they needed to make their judgments. Trust us. These days if journalists have not succumbed to infotainment, then they are recycling media releases as their own copy to further the corporate media's political agenda. So we are left to our own devices to cope as best we can:--all politicians lie. It goes with the territory, as do grumpy, cynical electorates. The system is broke.

Barnes' solution is dysfunctionality is to suggest self-regulation by the politicians, then to reject it as impractical. He says:

In 1996 Peter Costello introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty to ensure that the financial state of our nation is always presented consistently, honestly and prudently. It's tempting to suggest that political statements should be subject to similar rules, but this would be impossible to implement. Instead, in a democracy like ours voters have a responsibility to deploy their own political lie detectors, and mark down those caught out....In future, when all who aspire to govern ask us, "Can I be trusted?", our answer should not be a cynical shrug and a "yeah, whatever". Otherwise, we will get the politics we deserve.

Barnes' doesn't go far enough with self-regulation. One option is to strengthen the checks and balances that have built into the political system of liberal democracy.

Checks and balances on executive dominance would be a good start by giving greater power to the committee system in both houses of Parliament. Proportional representation for the House of Representatives, along the lines of the Hare-Clarke system, would be another place to start. This would ensure that we citizens have a choice about who to vote for and against within all political parties.

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March 10, 2010

Canberra gaze: a "political debate"

I watched Question Time in Parliament yesterday to check out what was going on in the political debate and I was taken back by the Coalition's tactics. There were lots of questions about paid-parental leave that highlighted how generous the Coalition's scheme to give up to $75,000 to parents who stay at home for six months was in contrast with the Rudd Government's stingy and mealy mouthed one. The questions probing the limits of the health and hospitals reform plan and the national educational curriculum were minimal.

So the Coalition's strategy messing with the system by throwing anything at the Rudd Government that comes to hand continues. It doesn't matter about the contradictions --introducing a big tax when the promise is no new taxes---as it is about getting noticed and destabilisation with whatever-it-takes to oppose the Rudd Government on everything.

The strategy is to wedge Labor---''supporting big business over working families'' is the new talking point--- and to win back female voters who have been deserting the Coalition.

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February 1, 2010

an election strategy

I tuned into the ABC's Radio National Breakfast this morning before I went to the gym, and I heard the Coalition selling its retail politics. It was Barnaby Joyce doing his standard rave thingy on climate change. The ETS is a gigantic big tax, it's a revenue raising mechanism to pay off the huge government debt, and we'll all be crushed by the big tax and gigantic debt. Outrage outrage. Anger anger. Bad bad bad. He's running a campaign.

At least Joyce didn't go anywhere near the comic figure of Lord Monckton, currently going around Australia tilting at windmills:

Morten Moreland

Barnaby Joyce slowed right down when he was asked about his cost free climate change policies. He kinda sounded deflated. Aw shucks, I have to say something sensible here. Yeah we'll have something soon he said. No details though until just before the election. It wont be a consumption tax like Labor's and off he went on the talking points of the big tax rave crushing us all again. He's in election mode firing up the conservative base with the talking points of his politics of fear.

The Coalition may be firing up the conservative base, with its campaign, but it is still struggling to establish its credibility on economics, the environment and the digital economy whilst confronting the reality of losing the 2010 election. They are strapped for cash and will be hoping that consecutive increases in interest rates cripple the Rudd Government.

It is not plain sailing for Rudd Labor either. As Andrew Norton observes, the:

wide disparity between climate-change aspirations and ETS readiness creates major problems for reformers. Though there are many precedents for governments pushing ahead with unpopular policies, the ETS is potentially unusually politically difficult. Its effects will be felt by every voter, but especially those without children or on higher incomes. They face substantial and uncompensated additional costs. ETS benefits will be hard for voters to perceive; the scheme comes with a promise that fewer bad things will happen rather than that life will eventually get better.

The ALP is going to play down climate change, ETS reform and the shift to a low carbon economy. The politics of climate change has done its job----fractured the Coalition. It doesn't need to fight an election with its ETS as the central issue. Given its lack of reform so far, it will campaign on it how it has a long-term economic reform agenda: ie., the need for productivity improvement and fiscal discipline to address the challenge of an ageing population.

The Rudd Government faces the prospect of a Senate controlled by the Greens after the 2010 election, and that must make them rather uncomfortable.

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January 20, 2010

is the old political order in decay?

The Piping Shriek argues in The Failure Of Factionalism at New Matilda that the old political order in Australia is in decay. He offers two examples to make his case: the decay of the NSW Right and its business/union partnership model that defined Modern Labor Mark I into bankruptcy and Tony Abbott's ascension, which exposed the bankruptcy represented by the old guard of the federal Liberals.

He says that in late 2009 both dumped a leader that they called “experiments”, but were actually products of their respective loss of control. But in doing so, the dumped leaders blew the gaffe on their parties that signalled that while status quo may look as though it has been restored, to all intents and purposes, the game was up and that the last vestiges of the 20th century political order were coming to an end.

His argument is that given the decline of the old political factional in the ALP order and the rise of climate change politics at a global level it is a bad strategy to try to maintain its old ways. Consequently, the Rudd Government needs:

to replace an exhausted domestic program with an international agenda. We saw in 2009 that a central problem for the Government, the uncertainty and lack of direction in the international order, became more apparent. It was not just in the inconclusive results of international summits like Copenhagen, or the earlier economic one in London. On the regional stage, incidents like China's arrest of Stern Hu, Indonesia's wrangling over the Oceanic Viking, or the Indian Government's escalation of the stabbing of an Indian student in Melbourne, only served to highlight that Australia has become an increasingly soft target as the authority of the old political order declines.

Climate change remains the defining factor that is re-shaping the political landscape because ultimately it impacts directly on the main question facing both sides of the political class – legitimacy.The Liberal old guard has tried to make a stand around climate change their contortions on the issue are all too apparent.

I accept this 'decay of the old political order' argument. I would reinforce it by saying that the old political order represents the defence of the fossil fuel industries on the grounds that Australia is among the most dependent on fossil fuels for its wealth creation and urges a wait-and-see policy to climate change. That defence includes large chunks of the Labor Party as well as the conservative dominated Liberal Party.

Update
So where to now for those in the political class who are determined to move way from the old political order? Is there a new political order in formation? If one is emerging, then what does it look like? Is it the presidential-style of government?

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October 10, 2009

Turnbull: leadership terminal?

The consensus view of the Canberra Press Gallery is that Malcolm Turnbull's leadership of the Liberal Party is terminal and that and that he will not survive beyond Christmas. Dennis Shanahan, writing in The Australian, reckons that this future is cast in stone. The source for his prediction is the well known oracle of "many Liberals" who remain nameless.

Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald says:

It is not clear exactly when or how Turnbull's term will end. But once a leader is in the killing zone, unless Turnbull can pull off a turnaround of unprecedented proportions, these become details.

The killing zone? The Coalition is so deeply fractured along multiple lines - policies, personalities and party structures - that its first challenge is to avoid a looming landslide defeat. Why not kick out the Nationals? They want to become independent and they have the support of only 4 per cent of voters.

Michelle Grattan in The Age also argues that Turnbull's leadership is terminal. She says:

when dissident Liberals have kicked the leader almost to death, he's not going to be able to pick himself up and stage a credible election fight; especially when a substantial proportion of his troops dislike and distrust him.The question for the Liberals is not who could win the election for them but who will maximise or minimise the size of their loss. The way they are heading, they could be down another 25 seats. The Liberals simply can't afford Turnbull much longer.

Grattan is right about needing to address the loss. The Coalition's primary vote is as low as 35 per cent - just over one in three voters - and with its two-party preferred vote slipping at times to 42 per cent (it was 47 per cent in 2007), the Opposition could lose more than 20 seats.

There is an orchestrated leadership destabilisation campaign based on the assumption that the only thing Turnbull has left to offer is to take the bullet on an ETS and so allow the next leader a clearer run to the next election. The argument is that Turnbull cannot recover public support and that the party vote will continue to languish as long as he is leader.

The policy issue is about whether the Coalition should support any type of ETS at all. Many of the opponents of the ETS say in public that Australia should wait a whole lot longer before doing anything; but most are climate change deniers in that they reject that climate change is human-caused. So "taking the bullet on the ETS" means refusing to negotiate with the Rudd Government to make the ETS ever more business friendly.

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August 30, 2009

Canberra gaze: Kev + Julia

Is there a sense of disappointment with the Rudd Government emerging in the body politic? Say a growing realization that the white hot promises about major reform across a number of policy areas are not going to be delivered, and we are left with a kind of muddling along accompanied by a lot of spin and management of the 24 hour news cycle.

Is there a growing understanding that we should be thankful that what we have gained with the ascension of Kev +Julia is that the worst excesses of the Howard regime have gone.

'Change the government change the country' was always heady political rhetoric. The reality is more the traditional muddling through (managing) the global storms whilst protecting the old industries from change; a continuation of Howard on climate change. Where then is the progressive face of the Rudd Government? Where it is pushing reform beyond managing change?

Is one candidate Government 2.0? Some would argue so.

This has grown out of Web 2.0 in an attempt to define a new approach to governing which provides governments and their citizens more direct and immediate ways to communicate, engage and collaborate enabled by Web 2.0 principles and tools. We have the formation of Government 2.0 Taskforce, an issues paper and Senator Kate Lundy’s second and third Public Sphere events that have begun the digital engagement with citizens in Australia.

I have to admit that I was pretty enthused by Lundy's Public Sphere #3 on the Australian ICT & Creative Industries Development. The live feed worked for me in Adelaide despite the contributions from the Brisbane and Melbourne nodals being tech fuzzy; the love blogging was quality work; twitter worked sweetly; and there was digital engagment amongst citizens. So I could participate in a conference that related to my photography and blogging without have to travel by plane and cab to another city---the old 4am start and 10pm finish.

Lundy and co have shown that it can be done. Will the other agencies follow down this path? Or will they--eg., the Department of Health and Ageing--resist? Secondly, though it would make a lot of sense to have some State-specific focus in SA on the issues being examined by the Task Force, I cannot see it happening in SA.

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August 21, 2009

Canberra gaze: Coalition wedged

The Coalition is successfully self-destructing over climate change. By playing hard ball politics on the emissions trading scheme (the wedge) the Rudd government has successfully fractured the Coalition.

The Nationals are off on their own as their diehard climate change sceptics prepare to die in the ditches. The conservative western Australian Liberals have adopted the tactic of internecine conflict with their fellow Liberals. Many of the other conservatives enjoy seeing Malcolm Turnbull's carcass swing in the breeze.

The Coalition will be out of power for a couple of elections, if not a decade because its self-destructive tendencies are making the party electorally unattractive. They are in the grip of a death wish. The dinosaurs and relics from the past have yet to grasp the significance of environmental politics for Australia's economy; they think that acting as the mouth piece for the interests of the old polluting energy industries and King Coal is clever politics; and they still cling to the myth of unfettered growth.

The political reality is that the political taunting by Rudd + Co have reduced them to a shambles during in Question Time, an their twisting and turning to avoid the sharp edges and pincers of environmental politics indicates that they have little understanding of the relationship between the economy and its environmental support systems. The days of unfettered growth, the exploitation of nature by an unregulated capitalism are over, now that it is realised that the externality of global heating caused by economic growth fueled by electricity generated by fossil fuel represents a massive market failure.

As the economists say, the climate is the quintessential "commons," the public good that is free to everyone, and therefore valued by no one. But even now that we understand its value, and the risks of continuing to overburden it, the market cannot possibly fix the problem of its own accord. It is simply incapable of factoring in the very long-term costs and benefits, of giving them sufficient weight, to drive the investments that are needed in the short-term. That is why government must give it direction. But given the right direction and the right incentives, harnessed instead of stifled, the market can be a very powerful force for climate protection. the new rules of the market is that the climate will stop being free. There will be a cost for emitting carbon.

The response of the dinosaurs is that Australia cannot afford an emissions trading scheme or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global overheating now. Jobs will be lost. Industries will go off sure. Yet the economic models so far do a poor job of projecting how rising energy prices will lead producers or consumers to substitute other goods and services; how price signals will drive new technology and innovation; or how businesses will respond to changes in policy. The models also have a difficult time weighing the near-term costs of emission reduction against the long-term benefits of avoiding climate change impacts.

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August 6, 2009

Malcolm in the middle

What are the chances of Malcolm Turnbull surviving as the leader of the Liberal Party and winning the next election? It's zilch on the latter. It is extremely unlikely that Malcolm will ever became PM. His ambition will be thwarted as the Liberals look to be going backwards after the attempt to king hit Rudd and Swan in the Ozgate episode backfired so spectacularly:

They need to do everything in their power to reduce the electoral damage. The Australian will continue to campaign for Turnbull to be dumped, whilst the Nationals will continue to distance themselves from the Liberals as they realize that they need to develop a more independent political profile to survive.

Will the Liberals rethink their faith in self-correcting neoclassical economic model--question the elegant self-correcting free-market equilibrium theory?

Or will they continue to cover up the anomalies with the theory with the claim, along with the IPA that the current economic crisis is due to regulatory, and not market, failure and that we are witnessing the financial market self-correct in the most dramatic of fashions. Those who think otherwise express an anti-market bias The anti-market bias is the tendency to under-estimate the benefits of the market mechanism. The corollary is that the benefit of government intervention is over-estimated.What we can infer from this is that most macroeconomists are still blinded by the idea that efficient markets will take care of themselves.

Will the Liberals continue to defend big central government in opposition to the small government ethos in classical economic liberalism and neo-classical economic theory. Just how committed to liberalism are the Liberals?

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August 4, 2009

Canberra gaze

Turnbull and the Liberals are going to have some trouble putting the OzCar affair behind them and moving on to greener fields of economics and deteriorating budget fundamentals. Hope springs eternal I guess, even though the storm clouds are massing.

Ozgate is still now, and it is lead in the saddle. A very sick Godwin Grech, the Treasury official who testified before a Senate committee that he recalled an email from the PM’s office about John Grant, has admitted writing the fake email. Australian Story, which was filming in Turnbull’s office when the story broke that the fake email had been found at Grech’s house, showed the shock and bewilderment within the office. They had thought the email was real.

Unfortunately for Turnbull Grech said he handed a printout of the email's contents to Mr Turnbull and Senate deputy leader Eric Abetz -- which he later took back -- at a meeting at his wife Lucy Turnbull's office in Sydney's Potts Point on June 12, one week before Grech's evidence before a Senate inquiry. Turnbull must have thought that he'd struck gold-- the means to land a killer blow on Rudd.

Even worse for Turnbull, Grech wrote down a series of questions for the Opposition Leader to ask in parliament concerning Rudd's statements that he had not sought special favours for John Grant, the Ipswich car dealer.

Grech also says he never authorised anyone to publish, report, comment or discuss the contents of the email, which he showed Turnbull and which he discussed in a telephone conversation with a journalist that Turnbull arranged. The Liberals sacrificed him.

Turnbull has been damaged by Ozgate and more fallout can be expected in the future from the up-close-and-personal nature of his involvement with Grech. The favourable presentation of Malcolm in the soft sell of Australian Story has already been swept away by Grech saying that Turnbull was deeply and personally involved in the release of what he believed to be an email that could bring down the Prime Minister.

A betrayed Grech is going to be sacrificed by the Liberals in full damage control mode. Turnbull's defence had been built around Grech's public testimony at the Senate hearing, not previewing the email. They will throw as much doubt as they can on Grech's central defence that he gave them information in the hope that it would assist the passage of the emergency car financing bill.

Update
The Auditor General's Ozgate report clears Rudd and Swan, and points the finger at Godwin Grech. However, it is also heavily critical of Treasury for allowing Grech to be under huge pressure to deliver the dealer finance program by himself. The delays in establishing the program because of a lack of resources helped to create the situation in which Grech was asked to find private finance for dealers and this opened the situation to political referrals from MPs.

Grech writes in his response that Treasury did not reduce his workload adequately - despite the fact that he was hospitalised repeatedly to deal with a small bowel obstruction, kidney disease, osteoporosis and a metabolic bone disease. Other parts of his response indicates that he judges Turnbull used him to attack Labor's crony capitalism until he became toxic, and has now discarded him like a used rag. Betrayal.

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July 28, 2009

Liberal Rule

I got back to Adelaide from a few days holiday in Broken Hill in NSW doing some photography just in time to watch the second episode of Liberal Rule on SBS. It was so much better than the ABC's The Howard Years, which was very wishy washy and lacked any sense of critique of the spin from the ministers in the Howard Government. There was no counter narration by agreement apparently. Silly ABC.

I'd missed the first episode Cycles of Power. The second episode, Hearts and Minds deals with issues (industrial relations, multiculturalism, education and indigenous affairs), the contrasting positions on these issues and the strategy behind the policies of the Howard Government. The episode is upfront about how determined the Liberals were about using the political power they had gained by winning the 1996 election to change Australia into their conservative conception of Australia.

SBS are dead right. A decade of Liberal rule did change Australia.

Howard may have won the battle of the waterfront in the end (reduced union power and membership, greater productivity), but he lost the war of ideas around unionism and the role of the government as umpire between employer and employee. He also definitely lost the battle of ideas around reconciliation, despite rolling back Mabo. Australia, to all intents and purposes, remains a multicultural nation whilst the views of the one nation conservatism are those of a conservative minority. Howard succeeded in creating a two tiered education system by squeezing the public system (school and university ) of funds.

Conservatives lost the battle of ideas---ideology---at the cultural level and a decade of Liberal governance of the capitalist system failed in key aim to make conservative Australia the majority, electorally speaking.

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June 23, 2009

after the smoke clears

So the political crisis that the Liberals promised to engineer in the OzCar affair has fizzled to little more than the standard Parliamentary squabbling and bile. Can Turnbull use his finely tuned barrister skills to turn things around, reignite the blowtorch, and turn it on The Treasurer? How wounded will Turnbull become from the Labor counterattack on his big character?

For the moment people will just switch off now as the fizz has gone and there is no blood flowing as the arrows have missed their target. Some will see the ongoing political spectacle as the politicians throwing the switch to avaudeville understanding of a blood sport. Should we sit back and have a good laugh at the clown's doing their resignation act? Will this act be pushed aside by another act about spooks or moles?

What has been lost sight of with the switch to vaudeville is the politically significant "debate" in the Senate about whether Australia should take a legislated position on carbon reduction to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen next December. Or whether, like the US, Australia should decide its emissions trading policy after Copenhagen. Australian policy on carbon reduction really matters because it has a direct impact on both jobs and exports and on the necessary shift to a low carbon economy.

How is the big "debate" going? On the one hand, there is a Coalition filibuster on in the Senate to avoid having a debate on cap and trade or the ETS scheme. Delay, delay, delay is their tactic. On the other hand, the Rudd Government has ended the funding for stand alone renewable energy in remote locations of Australia whilst saying that Australia needs infrastructure funding to help soften the recession. Yet another renewable energy programme bites the dust because it is too popular.

What is going on here with Labor? They have even linked the 20% target for renewable energy to the ETS scheme, which is dead in the water in its current form. All the talk from Wong is about pressuring Turnbull to pass the GPRS legislation, when it is clear that Turnbull will delay as long as he can. Putting pressure on Turnbull has been Wong's standard rhetoric for ages.

Neither side of politics seems to have much to fear from voters on this issue, despite the popularity about households making the shift to renewable energy through putting solar panels on their roofs. Consequently, the politicians can afford play their parliamentary games in the legislative tussle with each blaming the other for no action. Maybe our legislators prefer to do nothing at all---so they promise environmentalists they could promise really tough emissions trading reform while also reassuring business (Big Carbon) that no such law is going pass.

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June 22, 2009

political heat and bluster

As we know the global recession had forced financiers to tighten lending, leaving many car dealers in danger of losing crucial financial support. Hence the yet-to-be-established OzCar finance facility. One fallout from the Rudd Government efforts to establish alternative financing for car dealers when two major financiers threatened to pull out of Australia at the height of the global credit crisis is the so-called OzCar affair or ute-gate.

Ute-gate refers to the Coalition's allegations of a favour for a mate (namely, Ipswich car dealer John Grant, a friend and political donor who lent a 1996 Mazda ute to the PM's electoral office for use as an electoral vehicle) by both the PM and Treasurer. Both are alleged to have helped to arrange finance from Treasury and to have misled Parliament about this, by understating their contact with, and support of, John Grant's attempts to find substitute financing for his business.

Little evidence has been presented to justify the allegations. Firstly, the Coalition does not have the alleged email from from Rudd's economic adviser Andrew Charlton to Treasurer Wayne Swan's office and to Treasury official Godwin Grech. Said email does not appear to exist at this stage, despite the clams of News Ltd journalists. Secondly, the case against Swan is circumstantial, in that the public emails show Grech reporting back to Swan and his office in regular detail about Grant's case, but Grant did not receive any finance for his dealership.

Not withstanding this, the Coalition is calling for the resignation of both Rudd and Swan for having mislead Parliament. At this stage it's still heat and bluster. On the basis of an email Turnbull says he doesn't have he has demanded the resignation of Kevin Rudd. The federal police and Auditor-General have been called in to ascertain the status of the missing email. So it's all sound and fury at this point by both the Coalition and News Corp newspapers.

That leaves the patronage and special treatment case against Swan in the spotlight. The case is thin. Godwin Grech in Treasury said he devoted considerable time and effort because he knew that Grant wasn’t any "normal constituent". Did Swan intervene on behalf of the Prime Minister's friend? Did Swan intervene on behalf of the Prime Minister's friend? If so, was Swan just acting like any MP and directing a constituent to the relevant agency as he claims? Did he lobby for taxpayer funds to be given to a car dealership in difficulty?

So we have the question of whether it is about process or outcomes. Did John Grant get preferential treatment is the question. There are emails showing two other car dealers got handled the same way. So was this preferential treatment just standard political procedure in a liberal democracy?

Once again, it is still mostly heat and bluster. However, heat and political bluster often results in burns and wounds. People get hurt and there blood on the floor. It is still unclear, at this stage, who will get hurt-----Rudd, Swan or Turnbull. Things will start sorting themselves out as information comes to light from the investigations by the Australian Federal Police and the National Audit Office.

Calling this a 'political crisis'--as do some News Ltd journalists--- is playing fast and lose with language. It's only a political crisis in the feverish imaginations of the media arm of the Liberal Party.

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June 20, 2009

too much spin?

George Megalogenis makes two key points in Let reality do the talking in relation to the second part of the Labor government’s economic stimulus package. Megalogenis rightly acknowledges that the structure of Labor’s stimulus package --the money flowing through the real economy--- is one in which the school building program aims to take over from the so-called cash splashes.

The first point made is that the second strand of the stimulus package is working:

Construction, the sector that usually leads the nation into a jobs recession, happens to be hiring again, according to this week’s official statistics. That makes it two ticks so far for the stimulus. Phase one, the $20.1billion in cash handouts, propped up consumer spending. Now phase two, the $14.7bn school-building extravaganza, is keeping the blue-collar tradie off the dole queue.... The construction sector had shed 15,000 jobs between last August and February. But 10,000 jobs were added in the three months to May - that is, after the second stimulus package was announced in February. Over the year to May, construction employment is up 8500, or 0.9 per cent. To put that result in context, construction had lost 50,500, or 4.3per cent, of its workforce at the equivalent period of the last recession in the early 1990s.

So the stimulus is doing the job it was designed to do--- a quick hit to the GDP in a context where many constructions are being finished slowly, some developments have gone bust, and there are few new big developments being started. Presumably, this hit holds things---helps prevent a deeper recession--- together until the big infrastructure projects come on line.

Megalogenis' second point is that a question mark should be placed over the second stimulus package in terms of whether the money is being spent wisely. There are examples of this not being the case. He says:

Kevin Rudd confuses the worthy exercise of sandbagging the most volatile part of the labour market with nation-building...Labor couldn’t have it both ways - spending promptly and investing wisely - so it sacrificed efficiency and equity for haste. ...Rudd lumps the mass school maintenance, announced in February, with the budget’s infrastructure agenda. This is where he invites confusion because he is selling a gymnasium and a road or a port as the same thing. Plainly they are not. If the economy wasn’t on the edge of recession, the gym may not have attracted the taxpayer chequebook. But the road or port would have been built, preferably by the private sector or in a public-private partnership in keeping with Labor policy.

Megalogenis is right on this: calling the money for school maintenance and buildings nation building is spin, since the word 'nation building' has historically meant really big infrastructure projects.

What is unclear is why Labor needs to spin in this way when the stimulus is working. It doesn't cover up the obvious flaw that nation building is more business-as-usual and has very little to do with making the shift to renewable energy. Is it the consequence of the obsession with media management? Is it a bad response to the Coalition's attack on Labor's Keynesian policies?

The question mark has the effect of increasingly interpreting Labor's reform policies as more about spin than action. My judgement is that the reform current of Rudd Labor is weak--the light on the hill flickers in the darkness. Most of the reform rhetoric looks increasingly like spin to cover up inaction.

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June 19, 2009

Canberra gaze

Does Costello's bowing out of politics give Malcolm Turnbull some clear air and room to move on climate change and emissions trading, beyond the current Liberal strategy of just saying no, no, no? Or, on other interpretations, just putting off passing the legislation until next year.

Will the Liberals take this opportunity to accept that action is required to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions need to peak within the next six years for the world to give a chance of limiting global warming above pre-industrial levels to about two degrees? Will they go beyond their rhetoric of massive jobs lost and the need for ever more subsidies to Big Carbon.

Costello's presence meant that Turnbull was, or allowed himself, to be trapped by the conservative wing of the Liberal party, which is ideologically opposed to an emissions trading scheme and desires to fight to the death on the issue. Surely the few climate change denialists can be disciplined by the Liberal whips, and The Nationals left to wander off in the wilderness to confront their outrage in the regional mirror. Not even Big Business (including the resource companies behind the green mafia) say they want the Liberal's to reject the legislation twice and so give the Rudd Government the double dissolution trigger.

According to the Climate change: Global risks, challenges & decisions report, recently released at the European Policy Centre in Brussels, Based on the latest scientific evidence presented to a preliminary conference to the main event at Copenhagen it says that recent observations are near the worst-case predictions of the 2007 report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the case of sea-level rise, the report says that this is happening at an even greater rate than projected - largely due to rising ocean temperatures causing thermal expansion of seawater.

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June 9, 2009

Senator Fielding: a climate change denialist

Senator Fielding, the Family First Senator, attended the Global Warming: Was it ever really a Crisis conference hosted by the Heartland Institute. The institute, which stands for free market environmentalism (ie., is opposed to governmental regulation proscribing polluting activities), is not a natural science research institute. It's position is that public health campaigns against smoking are based on "junk science".

Penny Bradfield

In his 'open mind' op-ed in The Australian Fielding says that his concerns arising from his fact finding tour are scientific ones, rather than policy ones about how to best address market externalities. He says:

I heard views that challenged the Rudd government's set of "facts". Views that could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories, but that were derived using proper scientific analysis. The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something I can remember ever being discussed in the media. The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something that is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the Rudd government. Has the government considered these questions, or has it just accepted the one scientific explanation for climate change at face value?

Fielding's argument is that these are the sorts of questions about the science of climate change need to be answered before any emissions trading scheme (environmental legislation to deal with market externalities of greeenhouse gas emissions) can be properly considered.

What Fielding has embraced is the claim that carbon emissions are not driving global temperatures, on the grounds that during the past decade carbon emissions have been increasing rapidly but according to some scientists global temperatures have not been rising; that through the past 100 years, global temperatures have not changed in proportion to the changes in carbon emissions; and that solar radiation is both highly correlated to global temperature changes, and is a plausible alternative explanation for global warming.

Fielding's position is actually a denialist one, ie that global warming is not caused by human actions. It is solar activity that is the cause. We can also infer that he assumes that the market is able to correct the negative externalities of industrial production, because market mechanisms left to their own devices contain built-in incentives for environmental degradation. Fielding, consequently, is opposed to governmental regulation proscribing polluting activities. Thirdly, his open mindedness is limited as he views his environmental opponents in the public debate as being caught up in "alarmist rhetoric and extreme ideology."

If this is not his position, and if he were as open minded as he claims he is in the op-ed, then he would have also visited genuine primary research bodies, such as NASA’s GISS at Columbia, or NOAA’s Climate Diagnostic Centre at Boulder on his US fact finding tour. He didn't. It would appear that Fielding has also not bothered to arrange briefings on the scientific questions ----eg., whether solar radiation is a plausible alternative explanation for global warming----through the CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. That he hasn't done this means that he not making a genuine attempt to enter the debate and that the criticisms from global warming scientists about his solar flare explanation is warranted.

We can infer that Fielding's position is a political one---he is acting to prolong the transition away from coal and other fossil fuels. Fielding frames his political opposition to an emissions trading scheme in scientific language so as to lend credibility to his blocking of environmental reform. His politics is to exempt coal-fired power stations from an ETS, or to provide them with free permits. In acting as the political representative for the Victorian coal industry Fielding has placed himself on the margins of the debate on the right kind of political action.

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June 7, 2009

Canberra gaze: Rudd reshuffle

In the first significant revamp of Kevin Rudd's front bench line-up Rudd said that his reshuffle was "a minor reshaping of the executive" to bring Mark Arbib, Chris Bowen, Jason Clare and Greg Combet and that he called the shots not the factions in the Labor Party. That may be the case, but Rudd also used that reshuffle to shore up his NSW Right power base.

So what does the shuffle say in terms of its political meaning? My interpretation is that places an emphasis on jobs in an economic and political landscape recast by the global financial/economic crisis. Labor's response to this crisis has been to make jobs the priority at the price of debt and deficit, not to use the crises to begin the long term shift to a low carbon economy.

So we will experience more strategically planned leaks, ever smiling snaps, and lots of happy headlines of ministers in hard hats and red vests controlled by the Prime Minister's office so that the Rudd Government looks in nightly news as if it frenetically trying to help people through the global economic crisis. Media management within the relentless 24-hour cycle is everywhere.

The cracks in wall to wall media management imagery, slogans, spin and publicity can be seen around climate change, and what has been disclosed is the political reality of the Rudd Government just caving into the big polluters and saying nothing substantive about addressing climate change.

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May 31, 2009

Canberra Watch: big on everything

Ross Gittens makes an interesting observation in the Sydney Morning Herald about the style of Rudd's mode of governance. Rudd, he says is just big on everything:

Big on foreign affairs, big on defence, big on education, big on relations with the states, big on Closing the Gap, big on modernising infrastructure and big on a dozen other things" Trouble is, being big in any of these areas costs big money. Trying to be big in all of them costs more than we could ever afford. But Rudd also wants to be big on keeping taxes low, big on being an "economic conservative', big on spending to mitigate the recession and big on getting the budget back into surplus and eliminating the public debt.

And Big on industrial policy to protect old style manufacturing, as in the car industry. Too many Big's Gitten's points out means that Rudd will be forced to choose in terms of priorities:

In the end he'll be forced to choose, and all the argy-bargy of the past three weeks tells us what his choice will be. He's incapable of hiding the inferiority he feels to the Liberals on economic management and the Libs think their best hope lies in skewering him on deficits and debt, so that's what will win in the end.In other words, Rudd will end up delivering reasonably responsible budgets, but will do so at the expense of a long trail of postponed promises and dashed expectations.

Gittens says that all the signs are that defence spending has been deferred in the 2009 budget to hasten a return to surplus. What we are offered is a vision of what the defence force will look like in 2030.

I think that Gittens is right on this. Rudd is on the defensive on spending big since that means debt and deficit, and this debt will slowly work away in the background to undermine the Government's economic management. First, the government's revenue decline means that Rudd and Swan's political preference will be cuts to spending. Secondly, being Big on somethings --such as education --is mostly rhetoric. It is the same with renewable energy:---Rudd and Co are very small on investment in renewable energy.

Rudd and Co are also small on the shift that is taking place in the economy away from routine manufacturing jobs towards towards the knowledge jobs by people who analyze, manipulate, innovate and create. As Robert Reich points out:

These people are responsible for research and development, design and engineering. Or for high-level sales, marketing and advertising. They're composers, writers and producers. They're lawyers, journalists, doctors and management consultants. I call this "symbolic analytic" work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas....On the back of every iPod is the notice "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China." You can bet iPod's design garners a bigger share of the iPod's purchase price than its assembly.

Wouldn't it be great if on the back of the new renewable energy technology products is the notice "Designed by X in Australia, Assembled in China." But we know in our hearts that is not going to happen, since for all their talk about making the Big shift a low carbon economy, our politicians just cannot see beyond coal. Coal is king. Australia remains Quarry Australia.

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May 25, 2009

Old Labor

Jack Waterford has an op ed in The Canberra Times that gives a good account of "Old Labor"--- or Right wing Labor---- vis-a-vis The Greens on issues around the environment, feminism, multiculturalism, the rights of refugees and Aborigines people. He says:

A good many old Labor stalwarts, including machine people, completely despise and dismiss the Greens and their constituencies. There's the use of phrases such as ''inner city elites'', and the continual charge that some of the social focuses of Green voters are based in living in some sort of la la land where people do not have to encounter ''real'' issues or the ''real'' problems of the economy.....'Old Labor'' claims to respect the drift of such impulses, but to regard them as secondary to bread and butter economic and industrial issues. It thinks that giving them too much attention can symbolise losing touch with the ''real'' voters. Some of them think that Paul Keating's late-premiership attention to such issues sealed his defeat. They view the interests of such constituencies at heart as middle-class issues and self-indulgences, compared with the hard realities of winning and sustaining power from the electorate. And, anyway, they think, those so motivated really have nowhere to go other than to supporting Labor, even on such issues, ahead of the Coalition.

Waterford's argument is that the young, activists, people who want to be involved, and idealists are turning away from "Labor'', which is increasingly a brand name like soap constructed by advertising agents, public relations men and psychologists. They are making the turn to The Greens who they see as willing to address the gut issues. This is a long term trend that works against a morally conservative Labor Party in the inner city seats of the capital cities.

My judgement is that Waterford's account is pretty right and that the inner city seats, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney will be captured by The Greens, who have laid claim to the Labor's ---historic concern with the light on the hill. The Greens will also increase their seats in the Senate at the expense of the Coalition, that is shifting further to the right. Labor will increasing look what it actually is---a middle of the road party bounded by political parties on the right and the left, which it decries as extremist and irresponsible.

The conflict over emissions trading and global warming will intensify this long term shift

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May 20, 2009

Coalition backs off

I notice that the bring it on pose of the Coalition---"we will block everything so bring it on"--- has shifted to a more realistic stance of passing legislation such as the alcopops tax. Why the change of tactics? They are in a weak position: they need time to build up their debt/deficit message on the economy and they would do badly in a double dissolution election.

Moir overdoes it but you get the general idea:

So what will happen with the emissions trading scheme? Will the Coalition fight to the last man in the trenches or back off. Back off with lots of smoke and spin from the conservative noise machine is my guess.They have to fight on their own terrain and that is the economy and economic management. The conservative base may be onside re the irresponsible government message--judging from reading the comments in the Australian---but not the middle section of the electorate.

As Paul Kelly notes the Liberal Party has got its election issue, which is pinning

the brand of "higher debt, higher unemployment and higher deficits" on Labor, and [asking]: "How many years, how many decades will it take us to pay off hundreds of billions of dollars of Rudd Labor debt?"....This budget draws the battle lines for the next election with the economy as the dominant issue. Rudd will campaign as the leader whose decisive actions saved Australia from the worst brutality of the global recession and Turnbull will campaign to liberate Australia from another long night of Labor deficits.

The Coalition will not deny Rudd's carbon emission scheme and create the basis for a double-dissolution election.Their hardline stand against emissions trading will melt over time in the face of political reality.

By pricing carbon, a cap-and-trade programme would have a tremendous number of beneficial spinoffs from providing incentives to make the shift to clean energy at the provider level and to making individuals more efficiency minded and on and on down the line. But it is not the end of the story, as it will do little to change peoples' driving habits, or to reduce the price of renewable forms of energy.

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May 15, 2009

Coalition flexes its muscles?

I watched Malcolm Turnbull's Budget reply address last night whilst cooking dinner. It was a strong presentation or performance in Parliament that was undercut by thin content. He looked a strong leader who had his finger on the pulse of things.

Apart from the tobacco tax proposal, Turnbull confined his comments to previously announced policies including tax relief for small business, an attack on red tape and reform of insolvency law. He also proposed the parliamentary budget office to advise governments and the creation of a Commission for Sustainable Finances to determine responsible spending levels.

Debt debt debt. Deficit deficit deficit. Labor is economically irresponsible was the campaign message for voter land. There was very little about how the Coalition would reduce government expenditure to bring it into line with the large fall in revenue die to the collapse of the boom. Debt debt debt. Only the Coalition had the courage to take the tough decisions, and they up to the task and were ready to take on the job. Bring it on. etc etc etc. The rhetoric remains the same.

What was offered amidst the debt/deficit rhetoric was a proposal to increase in tax on cigarettes as a substitute for removing the government's mean test for the private health insurance rebate. The Coalition was going to stand their ground on private health insurance and oppose it in the Senate. This was done in the name of both individual self-reliance and independence (no mention of the 30% rebate or subsidy of course) and good public health measure to reduce smoking (no mention of the Coalition's entrenched opposition to the alcopops tax of course).

These kind of policy contradictions do not worry the Coalition backbench. They just paper over them with the debt/deficit rhetoric. Nor are they worried that the means test on the private health insurance rebate is reasonable and generous — cutting in for couples at $150,000, and it is only at a combined income of $240,000 that a couple gets nothing by way of a subsidy.

The 'bring it on now' rhetoric---Turnbull is ready to fight an early election over the Coalition's decision to block Labor's plan to cut private health insurance rebates--- is political huff and puff. As Michelle Grattin points out in The Age:

Although it is improbable that Rudd would go to the polls very early, the threat could destabilise the Opposition. It is in the worst of shapes to have to even contemplate fighting an election — without money, without policies and without its leader having built up credibility with the public.This is a shoot-from-the-hip gesture that is badly conceived in both tactics and substance.

No matter. Opposing the means test on private health insurance rebate is a strongly symbolic issue in the Liberal heartland and it gives committed Liberal partisans something to fight for to defend their self-reliance values.

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May 13, 2009

Budget 2009 ---good times near

The heavily leaked Budget 2009 is being sold as the third phase of a fiscal stimulus to ease the fallout from the recession. The headline number is an $22 billion investment in the infrastructure that Australia requires to recover, grow and prosper. There is $8.4 billion on roads, rail and ports, $3.5 billion on clean energy, $2.6 billion on education, $3.2 billion on hospitals and the old $4.7 billion investment in the National Broadband Network. The total---$22.4 billion for "building our way to recovery"---is a fairly modest government contribution to infrastructure spending.

This part of the budget proceeds with, and repackages and makes-over, the spending on infrastructure measures decided during an economic boom. The permanent tax cuts that will cost the Treasury $5.3 billion over the first three years were barely mentioned. It is simply adding on top of that the cost of responding to the economic bust. And beyond the recovery in a year or so? What then. Nothing said!

It is not a green budget at all. It fizzes very badly on clean energy being a green shoot as all we have are four Solar Flagship projects. Even though the budget is all about spending the money for the future, the amount for solar energy is small ($1.3b). It shows, yet again, that the Rudd Government is not that serious about greening the economy and using the recession to start making the shift to a low carbon economy.

There is little to indicate that the Rudd Government is freeing itself from eleven years of Howard Government hostility towards renewables, which was encouraged so effectively in the media by the coal and nuclear lobby. There is little to suggest that the Rudd Government will develop a renewables manufacturing industry, creating jobs and export income at the same time as cutting Australia's reliance on fossil fuels.

The attack on middle class welfare has been done with a feather, the unemployed are ignored, whilst the reduction of the big deficit ($53.1 billion) and reducing debt (gross debt of $300 billion or 14 per cent in 2014 and around 4 per cent 10 years from now) is based on optimistic growth forecasts, rather than cutting into middle class welfare (health insurance, family payments, super concessions).

The economy will bottom out in mid-2010, with a recovery beginning in the second half of next year and back to solid growth and good times. China plugs the gap. The "worst recession since the Great Depression" is pretty much coming to a close and the concern is planning what the government will do in the recovery. So how do they reduce the welfare spend that Australia can no longer afford cos the boom is over?

The Labor tradition is an increase in pensions--single age pensioners get an extra $32.49 a week whilst couples will get an extra $10.14 a week--and paid parental leave. Despite the effects of the stimulus package, unemployment in Australia will reach 8.5% next year, yet the budget contains little in terms of measures specifically directed at improving the lot of the unemployed.

How come that unfairness? Is it assumed that they'll all get jobs quickly. However, the long-term unemployed are ignored in favour short-term youth unemployed. So what does what fairness really mean here?

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May 7, 2009

Turnbull's economic politics

In his Press Club address Malcolm Turnbull argued that debt levels were soaring and that we should all be worried. He argues that when governments spend borrowed money they have to make sure they maximise the return for the taxpayer. Instead the debt burden on the taxpayer is increasing. He's creating fear about debt levels:

Bruce Petty

Turnbull argues thus:

At the end, after the vacation – the family that’s done that, they’re left with a debt and some snaps in the family album and some nice memories. The family, on the other hand, that borrowed the money to renovate their house is left with an improved asset and something of real value. And it’s exactly the same with nations, exactly the same with Australia. Debt which is incurred to fund investment in infrastructure that increases the productivity of Australia will, in time, pay for itself because it produces a stronger economy, it generates more jobs, more income and, therefore, more revenues to the Government.

The argument is designed to support Turnbull's position that main that implies the Rudd Government does not have are the building blocks of a strategy that is going to deliver that platform for growth that is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs .

Those building blocks are no more debt than is absolutely necessary, keeping the deficits as low as possible, having a plan to restore us to surplus and spending on infrastructure. The Rudd Government, he claims, is maxing the credit card to the tune of $300 billion, splashing the cash, and not spending on infrastructure.

One part of this is disingenuous. The so-called "cash splash"----ie., the stimulus package--- is working its way into the economy in terms of retail sales and pushing forward housing activity. It has softened the impact of the decline (ie., by propping up employment) until the "shovel-ready" infrastructure spending kicks in after next weeks budget. Turnbull is in effect claiming that stimulus package money is ill-spent --hence the phrase "cash splash"--because it is not invested in infrastructure.

Then we have the fear part about the burden of debt:

And this $300 billion means $15,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Australia. So a family of four, it means $60,000 of debt. That’s what our children are going to be left with by the Rudd Government. It is a frightening prospect for them and it underlines the way in which this Government with its classically Labor addiction to debt has undermined our confidence as a nation, our economic confidence, and above all and worst of all impeded our capacity to recover from this downturn.

As Turnbull said on the ABC's 7.30 Report:

the problem with socialists is that at some point, as Margaret Thatcher said, you run out of other people's money. And that's the problem with the socialists running Australia at the moment: they've run out of the money that was left to them by John Howard and Peter Costello and now they've decided to max out the credit card. And if you think that that level of debt will not be a brake on our recovery, will not result in higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future, then I have to say to you that you're kidding yourself. This level of debt is a heavy burden.

Labor is reckless with money, Always has been. They are bad economic managers. Always have been. That's the Liberal Party's politics. Always has been. That is the subtext of Turnbull's message.

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May 5, 2009

Budget forebodings

We know that the global recession overshadows the Rudd Government's budget and that the recession will shape the series of reforms that had been set in place. So what is going to happen? Tax receipts are falling, welfare claims are climbing, the global recession has hit home and there are political commitments to meet, such as the pension hike. What will be pushed into the background?

Lindy Edwards in the The Age says that:

The big gamble of this budget is how deep the recession will be and whether stimulus can effectively offset it. Will some of the more benign local forecasts be right? Or will unemployment spike enough to drive a collapse in housing prices, unleashing a downward spiral and making the IMF's doom and gloom more prescient?

Edwards adds that a milder recession means that a good stimulus package might be enough to keep things on the rails.

However, not being able to escape the worst of the global downturn means that the stimulus money might disappear as a drop in the bathtub as we all go down the gurgler. If the spending isn't initiated quickly enough to avert the worst of the recession, there are no guarantees the Rudd Government will be re-elected.

One consequence of the budget is that we can kiss the education revolution goodbye. As Simon Marginson says most of the recommendations of the Bradley report on higher education and the Cutler report on innovation will be "postponed". Priority will be given to measures that extend the capacity of education to meet unemployment, and advance social equity.

Treasury, he says, is less interested in the education revolution than in growing exports and education is our third largest export sector in dollar terms, behind only coal and iron ore. Education earns more than wheat, beef, wool, gold, tourism and other staples. The growth of commodity exports has been slowed by the recession but education exports will grow in 2009 and look recession-proof, for the time being at least, and those educational exports will be supported at all costs.

Paradoxically it is the public underfunding on higher education that drives the exports since the universities seek to overcome the loss they make on domestic students with international students paying full fees. The price is the decline in the average student-staff ratio, from 15 to 20, and middling research capacity.

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March 21, 2009

Canberra gaze

It's hard not to disagree with Leak about Senator Fielding. There is something strange, if not disturbing, about Senator Fielding and Family First that goes beyond their 1950s style conservatism, which is still strong in the ALP. It is to be found on the Labor Right --eg., Senator Conroy on the mandatory filtering of "unwanted" material ---and many of them do sound like the DLP of yesteryear. They disguise their 1950s conservatism and shift to a climate of fear by saying that they are Family Friendly.

Given the contradictions in Fielding's position on alcopops and family values, it is hard to put my finger on the disturbing bit, so I will just leave it to Leak:

Bil Leak

The good news for the ALP is that Julie Gillard got her industrial reforms through. It is a big political win and should be celebrated as such. Gillard had never let an opportunity pass to squeeze every bit of political advantage out of the Liberal confusion on the issue in the last weeks of Parliament. No doubt the Rudd Government will probably be talking pay restraint soon.

The bad news is that the Labor conservatives (eg., in NSW and South Australia) continueto outflank the Right on the law and order issue, with a distinctive centre-left twist. If the Liberal Right talks in terms of "throwing away the key", "three strikes", etc, then Labor works in terms of clean feeds, censorship, mandatory internet filters, CCTVs and so on. In doing so the ALP has backed away from defending and enabling a freer and more open society--- it has backed away from liberalism as it has increasingly embraced social conservatism that is concerned to silence dissenting voices to net censorship of prohibited content and unwanted material.

The social and cultural conservatism has become explicit as a result of the social dissolution and rupture caused by a neoliberal economics that has produced a society of winners and losers. The ALP right are willing to let the market rip, allow it to change the culture, and then seek to control and reshape people's behaviour, by a toughened up, authoritarian law and order regime that is marketed as "protecting the many against the few". The few are defined as bikes, child pornographers, drug pushers, gangs, graffitists etc

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March 18, 2009

The Senate acts

It's good to see the Senate doing its job properly --using its powers responsibly to improve government legislation and to push the government further down the reform pathway to ensure the public interest or a public good. The crossbench is crucial to a long list of bills the Rudd Government wants passed, and it is far from being recalcitrant or dithering or obstructionist.

A good example is the Allcopops legislation, where the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon have used their power to persuade Health Minister Nicola Roxon to set aside an additional $50 million from the $1.6 billion raised for measures to tackle alcohol abuse. Why would the Rudd government resist that proposal,when its concern is to stop teens from binge drinking.?

The agreement includes the creation of a $25 million health sponsorship fund to provide support for sporting and cultural activities as an alternative to alcohol sponsorship, mandatory warnings on alcohol advertising, community-level initiatives to tackle binge drinking and enhanced telephone counselling services and alcohol referrals. Alcohol is connected to a health and can cause health problems.

The interpretation of this legislation by Bernard Keane, Crikey's Canberra correspondent, is that:

its lasting political significance will be no more than that of another stunt, Fuelwatch, which fell by the wayside last year after inquiries, theatrics and Parliamentary ranting, and was promptly forgotten

.
Keane does appear to behold the view that the Rudd Government has its agenda ensnared in Senate obstructionism and that the House of Represenatives rules. That how he interprets the Rudd Government needing to negotiate its key legislation through the Senate,

However, he misses the point of the allcopops issue. These may be small reform steps in taxing alcoholic lollywater, but they represent a break with the laissez-faire approach to alcohol advertising that paid no attention to the negative effects of alcohol. Keane misses the political symbolism of this, and the explicit rejection of the libertarian position that holds the "nanny state", or wowsers, or do-gooders are dictating how much people should drink or setting upper limits to drinking for everyone.

The Senate is acting because the full cost of alcoholic lollywater is not borne by the producer (Big Alcohol). This is the negative externality problem in economic language, and it challenges the view that the allcops tax is just the Rudd Government utilizing coercion for a tax grab (plunder) at the expense of individual liberty. What we have with allcopop is a political solution to market failure.

Family First senator Steve Fielding wants to push this issue further: to address alcohol advertising during sports programs on television.He wants the Government to close a loophole that permits television advertising of alcohol during family viewing time in sporting broadcasts. For once, Fielding has adopted a reasonable position. The implication is that the laws covering the banning and other restrictions on grog marketing and sponsorship do need to be tightened progressively.

Economic libertarians (the utilitarian variety) would argue against these government policies on the grounds that they exceed the bounds of the minimal state. They would oppose these laws on the grounds that they prohibit certain types of exchanges as well burdening exchanges by imposing high transaction costs. Some would argue that today's market failures will provide the opportunities for tomorrow's entrepreneurs to profit by new innovation. What they need to argue is that such policies to prevent market failure will not produce greater utility than a policy of laissez-faire.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:01 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

December 22, 2008

glog does filtering

Stephen Conroy put his name to a curiously disconnected entry at the Digital Economy Blog today. The entries over the past few days suggest that the blog is being written by a group of people with different objectives and different understandings about what a blog is. Or someone who mostly has their mind on other things.

Friday came an entry headed Developing Australia's Digital Skills which started with a gesture at engagement:

Yes, we know you want to talk about filtering and we will be posting about it on Monday...in the meantime, we wanted to talk about digital skills

Commenters took a dim view of Sunday's post, which appears to be a recycled media release.

Then today's post, the much anticipated chance to discuss mandatory filtering, does a series of odd things.

For one thing, it was posted three days before Christmas when there are few people around to respond, which queers the claim that "the Government is experimenting with a new form of consultation and a new level of openness in this medium." The header, Civil and Confident Society Online won't be attracting a lot of people wanting to talk about mandatory filtering either.

It's framed as part of an effort to increase public and business confidence in the internet in the interests of supporting a digital economy, as if they're trying to turn it into something like a sanitised mall experience. It would be difficult to design a less grounded understanding of reality. eBay's doing just fine amid the anarchy and child porn. Did they even ask airlines and travel agents how well online purchases are going?

Conroy says he's following discussions at Whirlpool, GetUp and the nocleanfeed Twitterverse, which must be keeping him up into the wee small hours. Whirlpool's up to its 18th installment with no signs of slowing down. Most Whirlpoolians appear to have given up on Conroy's blog, which isn't surprising. Is there really any point when "The Government takes the issue of cyber-safety extremely seriously and welcomes public debate about how we can achieve our goal of protecting children from harmful internet content" pretty much sums up where this is going.

Ditto for Conroy's responses to comments. Commenter Klaw81 responded to a bunch of the responses with some of the more obvious objections, but if the attitude of the whole thing is any indication, it's a waste of pixels.

If it gets through the Senate, I hope there's a bunch of much smarter people than me feverishly working away at some subversive software.

But wait, there's more:

Loads more comments have been posted, and more are still coming through. Today we get a so long and thanks for all the fish message with a Tannerish flavour:

All in all, we appreciate everyone who took time to engage with this first attempt at blogging by the Australian Government and we will reflect in the new year on the many lessons we have learned, in the hope that we can ensure that future online engagement efforts are more productive for everyone. Something that we have realised is that there are no established community norms about how people respond online to government and a lot of the nuances about how government functions are not transparent. This possibly led to some frustration in how we set up the blog, how we responded and what action is taken in response to the many comments we received. Hopefully, when the Government blogs again, we can work together in building up norms and improving the transparency.

Individual discussion spaces have unique community norms. It's good to see that somebody realises that and that a government blog, like any other, needs to establish its own. Norms take time to develop.

Kim over at LP links to Axel Bruns' thoughts at Gatewatching (as I should have done, Axel being an authority and all).

By attracting a sizeable number of commenters (and presumably an even larger number of lurkers) right off the bat - by virtue of its being an official government blog - the DBCDE blog never had a chance to move through the community phase in which those social structures establish themselves that are so crucial to the effective functioning of communities as communities.

So, quite apart from the filter controversy, what’s (necessarily) missing and what’s thus making the DBCDE blog a somewhat unwieldy beast at this point is a community with a sense of purpose and direction. An established community can be relied upon to do a good deal of self-policing - ensuring that comments remain on-topic, that participants exercise a modicum of civility, and that newcomers are effectively socialised into the established environment. But such communities are best grown organically, from a relatively small group of initial participants, as is evident in Australia’s best-known political blogs

While all of that is true, there's always the chance that you'll end up accidentally fostering an Andrew Bolt type community. Trevor Cook calls the ABC's Unleashed a ghetto, which is a fair call most of the time.

Still, there's no denying the glog would have stood a much better chance at establishing nice community vibes if it hadn't been launched with the filtering business hanging over its head. That was always begging for bedlam. To make matters worse on that score, there's more bad news for Conroy in the media today. We can also anticipate a bit more of this sort of thing from regional areas struggling with dial-up.

Interesting timing, shutting down the glog the day live trials start. What was that about transparency again?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:52 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

November 17, 2008

The Howard Years

The Howard Years is a political narrative told in the words of the Liberal Ministers and their staffers looking back on history and relying on their memories of the events of the Howard regime. It is a top-down oral history of 1996-2007. So we have justification rather than objectivity, fragments instead of narrative, and reminiscences rather than context.

Though the ABC is saying it is neutral---we will provide them with the space to talk about themselves and their actions---the conservatives will no doubt say that the Liberals are making it possible for their political opponents to frame their history. However, as there is little critical commentary in the first episode, it's the Coalition talking about itself in power.

The first episode, Change the Government, Change the Country, is about the first term that is marked by Port Arthur; Pauline Hanson; Aboriginal reconciliation and native title; waterfront reform and the decision to introduce the GST. Some things just happened, others were part of a well thought out political strategy.

The subtext is a presidential Howard ruling the roost whilst Costello labors in the windowless room with no natural light on the slash and burn Budget to counter the $9 billion blackhole. But we never learn what Howard wanted to change the country to---what were the sweeping reforms that he had up his sleeve designed to achieve? We are kept in the dark as much as the ministers were kept in the dark by Howard. They did not share his counsel.

So we just have the issues presented by the ministers in a shorthand way of staying on message with a few personal reminiscences. The background documents to the episode are here for us to explore. The context is given by Graham Morris, the PM’S Chief of Staff in 1997, who says:

And in come John Howard, and he says look, he values families, he values small business, he values hard work. John Howard is a bit like a safe Uncle and we’ll put him in there. He’s not going to do anything wrong, in fact he’ll probably do a lot of things right.

Howard was anything but a safe Uncle. He was a partisan figure, committed to fighting a brutal culture war against the symbols as well as the substance of progressive liberalism. The safe uncle interpretation of what Howard's radical change to create an alternative conservative Australia to the progressive one of Paul Keating, the "safe uncle" is shallow and dissembling. The history of 1996-1998 is one of warfare against indigenous Australians and the unions; warfare wrapped up in the Australian flag.

So we can dump all the ABC spin about there being no spin or commentary. There's spin aplenty -- the failure to mention that many of the ministers between 1996- 1998 had to resign. There is nothing to counter the spin by showing it up as spin.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:48 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 20, 2008

Liberal tribulations

It would appear that the conservative movement has given up on Nelson to lead them to a well deserved victory in the next election. So there is a campaign to draft someone to prevent Turnbull. Costello weighs heavily on their mind, and they see the giant shadow Costello casts over them. They have created the shadow and it is what happens when you spend time in the wilderness with out yesterday's Leader to run the show.

Adam Sob

What more can one say? That this political theatre is important because only the LIberals stand between us and the loss of our personal freedom from the Nanny State?That only the Liberals will dispense with the mindset of mediocrity that years of failure and embarrassment under Labor state governments have entrenched in us? That the solution to mediocrity, depression and dependence in a therapeutic culture is elitism? Only the Liberals will defend an open society.

The Liberals have to avoid looking weak don't they. They were ensnared in their own trap---I trust my Leader with unchecked power because he's Good!. They are firm believers in the omnipotence of the Leader when they were in power, and they are experiencing trauma in opposition because they are being mugged by reality. No longer can the Liberal political Establishment luse their old tricks: lie most brazenly when they want to claim that their own insulated, fringe views are shared by the common sense of the majority of "the Australian people" as distinct from the left wing base.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:03 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

August 1, 2008

Mayo by election

Will water feature strongly in the upcoming Mayo byelection? It was not even mentioned on the ABC's Q & A, which I watched last night, even though most of the programme was taken up with climate change.

The Mayo electorate includes the lower reaches of the River Murray, and Brendon Nelson was down at Lake Alexandrina campaigning for the byelection. Nelson said that he would do everything he could to force the Rudd Government to provide a $50million emergency assistance package for locals and the environment, with the money to be spent on carting water for farmers and assisting the tourism industry.

The ALP is not going to contest the seat. This is Liberal heartland. Nelson got a bit carried away as he publicly canvassed the option of forcing farmers to sell their water rights to tackle the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin. Dr Nelson's spokesman later clarified the Opposition Leader's remarks, saying compulsory acquisitions would only be countenanced if drinking water supplies were under threat.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:03 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 26, 2008

swimming alone

Apparently leader Brendan Nelson's future is "in his own hands", according to the Liberal Party drip feed to Shaun Carney at The Age. I'm attracted by the Spooner image of "in his own hands" because I've been visiting so many wild rivers in New Zealand recently:


Spooner

You would have to be pessimistic about Nelson's chances of surviving--despondent if you were a Liberal. Nelson's public profile-- persona--- is that he rides a motorbike, had his ear pierced and can play the electric guitar. The guy was rock'n'roll. He has the street cred, you see. But policies? What does he stand for? What does the Liberal brand mean these days under Nelson and Bishop? Are they waiting for the Budget?

Maybe Nelson could take up tax reform as his big thing--take up big business's call for a complete review of the taxation system? Or call for a total overhaul of the federalism? Nelson would then be associated with a reconstruction of the entire machinery of government, and would then stand for something policy wise. He stands for reform at a time when federalism is having a lot of bad press.

Hell. the Liberals are even talking about--touting-- Costello as Nelson's replacement. What's up with these guys? At least Turnbull is trying to do something. He is arguing that the recession in the US will impact on Australia and that the condition of the global economy is gloomier than the sunshine boys are making out here in Australia. Therefore, Swan shouldn't go too hard on the budget cuts as he might increase the downward pressure coming from the global economy and just make things worse. It's a good story.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:13 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

February 18, 2008

at Howard's end

Is the Liberal narrative in the Four Corners Howard's End programme a rewriting of Liberal Party history? All these hairy chested minsters are saying that they realized they were doomed, and that they reckoned Howard should have gone around 1996. But then they confess they couldn't do anything about changing the captain of the Liberal ship, so they quietly went down with the ship Stoics one and all. A question of loyalty you understand.

Howard wasn't ready to go and these Ministers didn't think that it was right for them to tell Howard to go, let alone force him out. Of course, they realized that Howard had to go. Change was needed as they had been their too long. But they did nothing. They couldn't do anything on their account. Few could even bring themselves to raise the issue; or even had the access to speak to Howard in person. He was the emperor, and they mere courtiers in the sun king's realm.

None had the courage to challenge Howard on crucial issues like Kyoto or Workchoices. The emperor ruled with an iron fist. In fact they are now confessing on public television----on ABC--- that they really knew nothing about these issues in terms of the negatives or the suffering they caused.

Really? Who is kidding who here? That they were so caught up in the sun king's regal bubble that they had no idea what was happening in the country or the rest of the world? That all the negatives swirling around their court was the hallucinations, paranoia and delusions of the barbaric left?

Saying it all on Four Corners is meant to signify that the confession is to be taken in the serious mode and not as a comedy routine.

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December 4, 2007

Treachery defined

Managed to find a wireless network. This is what I reckon will happen to the Liberal Party, if we go by their history.

Alan Moir

It's how they Liberals understand trust in a political sense.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:09 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 3, 2007

scary things

Back in 1964 Donald Horne wrote "several generations of Australians were taught to venerate not lions or eagles or other aggressive symbols of nationalism; they were taught to venerate sheep". The waratah is probably the most vicious of our national symbols, but if it's a sign of sheer aggression we're after perhaps our coat of arms should feature a worthy citizen thumbing away at a mobile phone.

Three fifths of a page of the Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin is devoted to what is optimistically titled Chatroom. The column publishes an assortment of comments submitted by thumb tribe citizens eager to share their thoughts with fellow Bulletin readers.

To the bloke in the blue ute & trailer burleigh town, lets just say it was your lucky day.

It's doubtful this was a congratulatory note following said bloke's purchase of a winning Lotto ticket.

If the system wont bring young thugs into line, the people will. The good men will stand back no longer.

In recent weeks the page has hosted some political commentary in among the calls for vigilante group action against everything from troubled youth to slow drivers and single mothers.

It's hilarious reading all the Howard believers sobbing txts. You are in the minority, get over it. No more Aust being run by a semi-literate moron in the White House.

and

To all the people complaining about the election, spit out the lemon and come along for the ride! It'll be great fun!

This may be the first time we've been on a first name basis with our prime minister, but anyone anticipating great fun is more than likely in for a disappointment. It's early days yet but Kevin doesn't strike me as the adventurous type. Or terribly inspirational either. And if he doesn't find himself a good speech writer soon he runs the risk of boring us to death. After a year of anxious anticipation his victory speech was woeful. Therese outshone him without opening her mouth.

He could do a lot worse than recruit Don Watson to write the apology to Aborigines. But for a bloke whose most threatening feature is his tendency to mix metaphors, Kevin has managed to strike terror into the hearts of some.

Fuel prices under lib max 1.30 first week under labor start at 1.36. Watch it rise under labor. Sure labor 4 good 4 the economy.

In the past week I've met one person who believes we woke up on the 25th November a communist country, and another who fears a terrorist attack on the Gold Coast. Labor are terrorist sympathisers and the Gold Coast voted Liberal. They're both too young to remember life under a federal Labor government and both get their information from their parents. The interesting thing is the different things that different people fear, with or without reasonable grounds.

Life with Howard was pretty bleak. The terrorism laws were scary until the Haneef affair exposed the weakness that is over-zealous but incompetent enforcement. The APEC security was truly frightening until the Chaser stunt. We were supposed to fear and comply, not despair then ridicule.

Still, how anyone can genuinely fear Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard more than John Howard and Smiling Phil Ruddock is beyond me. Dull oratory just doesn't compare with the collapse of infrastructure and a cavalier attitude towards all things nuclear. Newspapers publishing calls for vigilante groups bother me more than union bosses. And some jokes.

Kevin rudd was at a birthday party and when asked would he like some cake, said no thanks but i will have a few of those candles if nobody else is going to eat them.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 9:06 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 25, 2007

whither Australia

It's Howard's end. A chapter on our political history has just been closed. I see that Dame Leonie Kramer is pointing the finger at the press for closing the chapter. She says "The fourth estate has let us all down, The press, with noble exceptions, has been opposed to him." She noted the symbolism of a former journalist taking Bennelong to the brink of Labor control.

There is still denial about the policies: unpopular industrial relations reforms, climate change, welfare to work and a lack of vision of Australia's future amongst the hard edged Liberals. The Liberals had lost touch with public opinion. Apart from the economy they had little to offer in terms of the future and they couldn't see that it was time for political renewal.

Bruce Petty

So where to now? If the Rudd policy agenda is still a work in progress and me-tooism a campaign strategy, then we know that the states now have the obligation to work with the commonwealth government to fix the health system.That just means hospitals doesn't it?

We also know that Rudd's priorities will be federalism, a large part of which will involve sorting out the delivery of water services and education as well health plus the construction of the high speed national broadband network, and putting a computer in every school.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:55 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

November 20, 2007

who do you trust?

One thing Australian Idol and Big Brother have over elections is that voter choices have consequences they actually get to see happen. If Les gets his way Natalie will win Idol within his lifetime. There's no such guarantee with politics. We may or may not see greenhouse gases reduced, health clinics built or the buckets of promised funding actually distributed.

Over at PollieGraph, Jason Wilson mentioned Stephen Coleman whose research on democratic participation explores ways politics could make itself more engaging for those he calls BBs, the audience who take their democratic participation in Big Brother very seriously, but don't care much for politics.

Wilson argues that Rudd did the right thing turning up on Rove, partly because that's where the audience is and partly because different people engage with politics in different ways. If voters feel the need to 'know' the candidates then so be it.

We've reached a point of tension here when convention dictates that politics is debased when it flirts with the personal, yet we still want democracy. There's an unacknowledged inference that BBs have a duty to absorb endless and complex debate over policy and vote rationally based on the knowledge they accumulated having read Hansard. Not only is this not going to happen, but as BBs rightly point out, those elected won't necessarily implement promises anyway.

Coleman points out that

for many disengaged citizens, it is precisely the impersonal abstraction of most political talk that they find disingenuous and alienating

and who can blame them when so much of that talk is the linguistic equivalent of pretzels?

The successful candidates on Big Brother are the ones the audience feels are the most genuine and the most like themselves. Trust is as important to them here as it is in their political choices.

We treat the serious and the frivolous as though they're mutually exclusive, but they're not. Reducing emissions by xyz percent by the year abc is the stuff of serious policy, but it means nothing if you don't trust the politicians in question to do it. On that measure the BBs and political junkies are all looking for the same thing, if not on the same TV shows.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:10 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

November 15, 2007

morale central

After the Labor launch yesterday Andrew Bolt conceded on behalf of John Howard. He live blogged the event and, for Bolt, was quite generous in his assessment. His fans are furious, which suggests they also suspect that "Howard can start packing now". Bolt concludes "Play it safe from here on, and Labor has won".

The symbolism was perfect, from Whitlam, Hawke and Keating burying their differences for the occasion to Kevin remembering his wedding anniversary. Nostalgia for the party faithful and suburban sentimentality for the masses.

A the end of the John Show an appropriate assortment of important people climbed up on stage to stand with Howard. We know they'd all rather bury forks in their own thighs than spend time with one another, but there they were, smiling, waving and trying to look comfortable. Janette was first up, although it's not as though it was a race.

At the end of the Kevin Show the man of the moment left the stage on his own and went to Therese, who hadn't moved. We were treated to footage of an empty stage and a room full of happy people, one of whom was Kevin. High symbolism, but the real question is how many gold ties will be sold over the coming days?

This whole election thing had been sliding into tedium with a daily grind of confusing and pointless to-ing and fro-ing over which mile of road was worth an upgrade and which school would get a new roof on the toilet block. It's been like watching a cockroach refuse to die for hours on end. But yesterday livened things up a bit.

Howard made a pitch to private school parents seeking to promote division (again) and did his level best to paint Labor as a risky proposition, without too much success. If the response in the blogosphere is any indication, Kevin has given the whole election an energy boost even Shanahan grudgingly acknowledges.

Tim Dunlop has a roundup of the usual media suspects who are all fired up but seem to be having problems spotting the negatives. Give them time. Of course, what the opinion columnists think doesn't tell us anything other than what the opinion columnists think. But they do have a small moon effect on the tide of morale.

Liberal HQ must be a depressing place to be at the moment. There'll be some frenzied polling going on and the bookies will be busy. Simon Jackman says the odds in the marginals have started to look more like the polls.

We're nearly there. Nine more sleeps. Then we can wake up on the 25th November and wonder what we've let ourselves in for.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:08 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

November 14, 2007

being other people

A young Honours student of my acquaintance has just finished an ethnographic study of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo. It's a big deal for fans of everything from Buffy to Japanese Manga. Shrek impersonator Joe Hockey would be right at home there. The real enthusiasts get to 'be' their favourite super hero for the duration and they'll go to extremes to get the details just right. They're not the only ones.

My daughter has a Titanic themed work Christmas party to attend and was agonising over which character to adopt for the evening. Her relentlessly hilarious father suggested she go as Kevin Rudder. It was funnier when he suggested she wear a frown and go as the stern, but she risked being mistaken for smiling Phil Ruddock. People pretend to be people they're not every day.

Jane Caro has a piece in New Matilda suggesting that if we really want to know who our political leaders are we should have a close look at their wives. She points out that in the process of playing the stay at home wallflower, Janette has caused some confusion over whether she's Carol Brady or Saruman, keen supporter of Sauron the Dark Lord.

Caro thinks Therese Rein resonates better with thoroughly modern Australia. She's a successful business woman who doesn't need her husband's name to know who she is. We won't be getting any prehistoric, white picket fence, Hyacinth Bucket pretensions from Therese. She's the political wife equivalent of Xena, Warrior Princess.

Maybe, maybe not. As the people at Supanova know very well, we read people on the basis of appearance and accessories as much as, if not more than, on the basis of their actions. Especially if we've got nothing else to work with.

Janette wears pastels, but the lines are militant. There's no give or freedom of movement and certainly no relaxed and comfortable. That's about all we get. She's entitled to her privacy, but suspicion is the price you pay for being mysterious.

Therese goes for the adjusted business look, where lengths and widths are variations on the traditionally straight business lines. Her hair is chaotic and the family china is a delicate floral pattern. She gives the impression that she's going to chuck off her shoes at the first opportunity and indulge in a bit of slouching, or maybe even an undignified sprawl.

John and Kevin have gone for the clone theme, although we have been treated to what could well be the most spectacular tie competition in Australian history. I know there's a science to this tie business, but I'm not sure we're supposed to be either mesmerised or blinded by shininess. Unfortunately, they draw the line at the novelty tie, which is a waste in my opinion.

John has recently been suspected of botox injections, fake tan, vitamin B injections if not steroids, and some pretty strong treatment for arthritis, whatever that entails. He'd be a walking cocktail of dubious substances. Sylvester Stallone?

Kevin is Tin Tin whether he is or not. His work experience, nerdy reputation, and appearance all dovetail into a nice, consistent package. He looks like, and has apparently lived the life of, a goody two shoes do gooder.

Observing the cosmetic dimensions of politicians is a shallow excercise, all things considered. But we're about to choose who is going to determine the shape of our country. It's reasonable to expect us to use whatever evidence we have at our disposal but they're as carefully constructed as the Supanova enthusiasts.

Who the hell are these people we're electing?

We're being asked to trust them to run things, and we're also going to have to live with them being beamed into our living rooms every night. Tin Tin and Xena, or Carol Brady and Rocky Balboa?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 9, 2007

what ad campaign?

It goes without saying that the logistics of winning government are complex. And getting moreso as the technologies brought to bear multiply and change. It's an industry now not all that distinct from any other entertainment industry, and it mostly uses the same marketing techniques. Whether we like it or not, our new democracy owes more to Australian Idol than Ancient Greece.

We have somehow found ourselves in the permanent campaign without really noticing how we got here. Most of it is so blatant your average political consumer can spot the sales gimmick as easily as they can spot what's wrong with advertising a bag of sugar as fat-free.

My contribution to this blog was supposed to be on election strategy which should have been a doddle. Howard's has always been transparent and simple - basically whistle or wedge. I'd been watching Rudd since he became leader and there's been a clear strategy progession from his early repudiation of the right wing culture warriors to Kevin07 and working families. Tactics along the way have built a seamless strategy stream.

We know it's fatty and sugary, but we want it anyway. Consumers invariably reward superb marketing.

Beyond the whistle/wedge thing the Howard strategy has been a little harder to spot. Regardless of which tactic or issue you choose, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Howard and his marketing machine just didn't see Rudd coming. The word complacent has been thrown around a fair bit, but it's appropriate. By the time the Libs bothered manning the stations it was all too late and the script didn't fit any more.

Either that or the Liberal campaign strategy has been so tricky, clever and cunning that its sheer genius has escaped me, every analyst and commentator in the land, and the majority of the electorate as well.

Then there's the bit of the campaign I've ignored altogether which is the advertising. This is partly because I can't be bothered, partly because people are perfectly capable of deconstructing ads for themselves, and partly because political advertising is generally dull. With the exception of the ads showing Rudd showing Howard's ad, showing Rudd's ad showing Howard's ad, which threatened to launch us all into the twin mirrors of infinity, there hasn't been much to see.

Then last night I turned on the TV in the middle of Today Tonight and caught the end of an ad which seemed to be about the coalition government doing weird things to stop West Papuans getting their message to the United Nations. Did I imagine it? Did anyone else see it? Why run it in the middle of Today Tonight? Are there other groups apart from GetUp and the Exclusive Brethren doing this sort of thing?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:35 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

November 5, 2007

the week after last week

Assuming that the election campaign keeps trundling along its current course, the programme this week will include the Melbourne Cup tomorrow, which will give commentators lots of opportunities for corny horse racing analogies. Policy and pork barrell announcements will be treated as a side issue while the hot topic will be which horse Howard and Rudd back in the race.

Funding for South Australian roads is due to be announced tomorrow as well, but that could be held off until Wednesday to generate some noise over the interest rate rise. Howard is already in full spin mode on this, but it wouldn't be too surprising if that spin ends in time for Thursday's messages.

Alexander Downer has already been wheeled out this week, playing the heavy hitter role Tone the Abbott miffed last week. Pakistan, South Australia and whatever gems he's uncovered in his friendly chats with refugee and Muslim groups promise a heady mix. It seems logical that if one of the Liberals' two strengths, the economy, isn't working very well they'll go for the other one - national security. So it's likely we'll be blessed with Al's company on the evening news all week.

Saturday is pencilled in as the big campaign launch. This will be the last opportunity the Liberal Party has to access public funds for political purposes without violating any of the caretaker mode conventions, if I understand things right. We'll be going for growth until our senses bleed.

Working families everywhere will suddenly realise the error of their ways and start telling pollsters they were only kidding, or sleepwalking, or not paying attention. Badly educated postmodern youth will understand that this is about the future and, logically, vote for Howard. Environmentalists will understand that job creation can continue unabated in a global toxic swamp.

Perhaps.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:54 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

November 3, 2007

pork poverty

A Liberal voting friend recently observed that our local Gold Coast newspapers are full of complaints that the Coast never gets attention from the federal government. During federal elections some parliamentary lightweight might drop in to announce funding for a new bus shelter on the way to a more significant appearance somewhere else, but that's about it. Oh for the attention and barrells of pork lavished on Eden-Monaro.

According to the polls the four safe coalition seats that make up the bulk of the Gold Coast would probably remain safe if the entire coalition resigned. The swing towards Labor is verging on the ridiculous in Queensland, but the Coast remains resolutely devoted to the coalition. So we sit in front of our televisions every night hearing of gold-plated toilet seats and rose garden memorials for somebody's lost kitten being promised to the folk of more marginal electorates. We watch other people's children being hugged and kissed by important people. Are our babies inferior?

The Gold Coast doesn't do too badly out of the state government with major money-spinning attractions like Indy, Schoolies and a more than half full dam. We're a good resource of revenue, water and state Labor votes. But at the federal level we can safely be ignored as a Liberal inevitability.

It's unlikely that droves of worthy Gold Coast residents are wishing they'd voted Labor last time. They're unlikely to be watching the evening news wishing they were as undecided as the people they see rejoicing over all sorts of promised infrastructure improvements. Nevertheless, it's a fact of life that if pork barrell politics has become a permanent feature of our electoral landscape, the permanently marginal stand a better chance of enjoying better outcomes than pockets of loyalty to either side.

My Liberal voting friend comes from a long line of Liberal voters and in an ideal world could reasonably expect some reward for that loyalty. But politics is far from an ideal world. He's in his 50s, insecure in his employment, unhappy with his AWA, annoyed at the state of the roads around here and angry at the distribution of wealth that he still associates with the old white shoe brigade. We both think that climate change is a big problem and if government doesn't start taking it seriously we're on our way to hell with or without the handbasket.

We talk about education psychology and the election. He explains how people have difficulty accepting new information that doesn't fit with their pre-existing beliefs and the various strategies they use to discount, avoid or minimise the relevance of contradictory evidence. I tell him about the polls, the sad state of Liberal Party finances and how last week's tactics fit into the overall strategy. Labor strategy. The Liberals don't seem to have one.

He nods, smiles politely, says the Liberal Party deserves to be massacred but still thinks they're the better choice, then we trundle off our separate ways. I wonder how come somebody who knows so much about psychology doesn't occasionally examine their own, and he probably wonders why somebody who knows so much stuff doesn't do something more useful with their time.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:00 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

October 26, 2007

bling

Graham Young suspects that the greatest economic managers the country has ever seen have run out of funds. The big tax bang was wheeled out in the first week of the campaign to knock Labor off their feet and narrow that pesky gap in the polls. Morale was supposed to improve and donations would come pouring in which would get them through the rest of the campaign. Or not.

Andrew Bartlett has been attending public meetings at every opportunity, as candidates do. He regularly runs into other candidates, but the Liberals rarely turn up. It's accepted wisdom that Queensland is pretty important, so you'd think it would be worthwhile dropping by for tea and lamingtons with the locals. Apparently not.

One of the interesting things Judith Brett and Anthony Moran wrote about in their study of Ordinary People's Politics is the wide variety of ways people engage with politics. The ideal campaign engages in as many ways as possible. Policy and good governance for the serious, the personal appeal of the presidential campaign and pure pop for entertainment's sake.

With no cash for gimmicks or flash advertising and a non-existent grassroots campain there's no option for the Liberals other than buying voters with vast sums of their own money. Labor have the sort of money it costs to run the presidential and pop-style campaign we've been seing. We already know more about Rudd's background than we've ever known of Howard's. Smiling people everywhere are sporting Kevin07 t-shirts and bumber stickers. Happy people vote Labor.

The Liberals are stuck with the dull business of policy and governance - the economy, pensioners and roads. If they'd been as bothered with their own finances as they say they've been with ours, if they'd mucked in with the hoi polloi from time to time, and if they weren't always so down in the mouth they'd be a more attractive proposition. As things stand, they lack bling.

As proponents of the free market keep telling us, it's a cruel world. There's no such thing as a free lunch, it's every man for himself and the market can be trusted to take care of everything. Unfortunately, it looks as though these Liberal champions of the free market have fallen foul of the free market in party donations. I wonder if they're happy to see the system working so well?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 8:36 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 20, 2007

after one week

For those with an abiding interest in an assessment of how things are going in the election campaign--ie., who work in the hose race frame of won the first week of the election--- could do no worse than start here with the judgements of two old and experienced hands, made on the ABC's Lateline.

Leahy

ROD CAMERON: Well Howard won week one. Five to go. Rudd would still be favourite. This campaign will be won and lost... this campaign will win or lose the election for one of the parties. If I had to make... if I had to stick my neck out, I'd say Rudd's got his neck in front but it's still anybody's game.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Michael Kroger?

ROD CAMERON: I think Rod got that right. Rudd's clearly in front but whereas a week ago John Howard was in a lot of trouble, he's now back in the game.

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October 13, 2007

Captain Whacky?

Has he become Captain Whacky` as Annable Crabbe contends in the Sydney Morning Herald? As opposed to being the fastest gun in the West; the one with a lucky streak still married to his childhood sweetheart?

Bill Leak

He's turning up everywhere with his bottomless bucket of money and pledges millions, sometimes billions, for something or other.Every time he turns up these days he has reinvented himself.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:21 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

October 11, 2007

caretaker mode

Ever wondered what the rules are during the caretaker period between the calling of an election and the outcome? There aren't any really. There are conventions and guidelines and a fair bit of uncertainty. There are gentlemen's agreements like the ones Monopoly players make over what happens when you land on Free Parking, but no specific rules about whether it's ok to nick another player's cash or move their iron, boot, car or whatever while they're not looking.

None that could lose you your job anyway.

The running of the state, or country, is nominally handed over to the public service for the duration and if anything important comes up, both sides are supposed to be in on the decision making process since neither is technically running things. There is no parliamentary oversight and so the impartial advice of the public service crucial.

This monograph from Anne Tiernan and Jennifer Menzies via ANU E Press looks at the sorts of trickery public servants had to deal with during the 2004 Queensland State and Howard/Latham Federal elections.

I've only read the intro so far, but during the 2004 campaign Howard and so on did four ungentlemanly things:

-Posted ministerial press releases and transcripts on departmental websites [which technically weren't theirs to be posting on],
-Failed to brief or consult with Latham over a decision that needed making [which was dismissed on the grounds that a prime minister can't be expected to spend all his time explaining things to the opposition],
-Continued pork barrelling [even though technically they had no control over the money] and, you'll be ever so pleased to hear,
-Kept up some government ad campaigns [because the people needed to be alert but not alarmed election or not].

As we've often been told, Rudd is not Latham. He's highly unlikely to sprain Howard's wrist during a handshake given a chance encounter in front of TV cameras. It's difficult to imagine him getting entangled in his own tie doing the Macarena hand movements of the ladder of opportunity, although he does risk that rakish, tie-over-the-shoulder look if he's not careful with his out-the-back-door gesture.

He won't be wedged or whistled regardless of principle or policy. We'll see how he goes with the conventions and guidelines of caretaker mode. He's already dealing with the ad campaign one which, if comments from media commentators and blogworld are any indication, have well and truly sunk in. Seeking briefs has been part and parcel of wedge-avoidance.

It will be interesting to see how far Howard is prepared to push it and how much violation of convention Rudd is prepared to take. If he gets through it all without blowing a gasket he'll deserve a medal for extraordinary personal discipline.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:45 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 13, 2007

the evil Rudd

The level of emotion invested in John Howard is amazing, at both ends of the spectrum. Hate is a strong word, but Howard Hater is an appropriate label for some. On the other hand, Howard Hugger is barely adequate considering some of the deifying tendencies around the place.

Howard's a walking representation of the divisions he's relied on over the years which has involved some pretty extreme stuff, so it's not all that surprising if generates extreme feelings in people. Back in May that famous Howard hater Phillip Adams wondered what he would do with himself if Howard lost and he had nobody to hate anymore. What will Howard worshippers do without him? Will they just invest the same intensity of emotion in hating Rudd?

Some Howard devotees have already begun their period of mourning. Some are convinced Rudd is worth hating on his own merits because, no matter how much he resembles Howard, he isn't Howard. Some will hate him simply for beating Howard. Others will transfer their adoration to whoever replaces Howard without a qualm, if Andrew Bolt is any indication.

And then there are the ones who seem to genuinely fear Rudd. The prophets of doom who anticipate packs of union bullies prowling our neighbourhoods and frightening the elderly, economic collapse on a scale beyond imagination, Mandarin speaking children unable to communicate with their English speaking parents.

This article has to be seen to be believed. It's not the first of its kind at Online Opinion, but it's the most extreme so far. It extends fear and loathing beyond Rudd and the Labor Party to include the apparently idiotic public thinking of voting for him and, of all people, Janet Albrechtson. Some of the commenters see this election as a battle between the forces of good and evil.

How will such people manage to bear the thought of their own countrymen, let alone rubbing shoulders with them in public, if Howard loses?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:29 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

September 12, 2007

The media strikes

It's going to be the story of the day--- leadership destabilisation in the Liberal Party. The story has legs and it will be everywhere in Canberra, no matter how much the senior Liberals--Downer, Abbott and Minchin-- dutifully try to manage it by declaring their undying love for the greatest Australian Prime Minister since Menzies; or how they will stand by their man.

The media love this stuff--- 'kill the emperor' is their narrative. They own it and they will be squeezing their political sources for the good juice and the latest gossip to keep the destablizing narrative going. The body language will be analyzed as they probe a situation in which the Prime Minister limps on to the election too wounded to win, but too strong yet to remove.

It will be interesting to watch how the media in the Canberra hothouse cover this unfolding tragedy of the blinded, wounded emperor that signifies the end of an era. The media will become the story as the Canberra Press Gallery talk to one another on Sky News and on the radio about what they have written and trade insights.The media story is the main political event.

Sky News is geared up to air all the different angles and it will be the raw material for the other media organizations. As Mark Day observes:

...a 24-hour news channel can go live to the event and deliver on the promise of a full coverage, including every press conference from start to finish. There are two main audiences for this coverage: the political cognoscenti who participate in the process or demand to observe every nuance, and the rest of the media. To them, Sky News is a valuable resource, an instant transcript in every newsroom across the nation. Politicians know this.

The wounded leader scenario will be hosed down, but the recriminations and damage will linger and surface ensuring the LiIberals themselves remain the main story.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:18 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

September 7, 2007

Howard: tide's flowing out

So APEC offered Howard, as the man of steel, the big chance to define himself on foreign policy and climate change and find points on which to land some good punches on Rudd and ring him him to knees. Would this save Howard?

Leak

The domestic narrative has shifted. The Coalition is no longer just 'in trouble.' It is now looking as if it 'might lose.' The body language has changed, along with the framing, as the shift a shift in opinion away from the coalition continues. Morale and momentum within Liberal ranks are disintegrating in the face of persistent poor polling.

In his opinion piece in yesterday’s Australian Paul Kelly stated that:

The Howard Government faces the prospect of political annihilation and the most serious defeat since the Liberal Party was created by Robert Menzies... The sense of frustration within sections of the Howard Government is undisguised as senior ministers confront their likely obliteration while convinced that they remain a good government ... That Howard faces a more serious defeat than Billy McMahon or Malcolm Fraser is a sobering prospect, once seen as impossible.

Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian writes that Howard must go. She says:

It may not be rational. It may not be fair. It's not about Howard's age. He is fit, capable and, like that Energizer bunny, he could stay on to fight another fight. But voters appear to have turned off Howard. They appear to have stopped listening. Each new initiative that was meant to deliver a electoral bounce has failed to do so. The Howard factor is there. Where once it meant success, now it presages defeat. A defeat that perhaps can only be avoided if Howard steps aside. What makes it so depressing is that so many conservatives and senior Liberals remain in denial. The last rabbit Howard should pull out of the hat is Peter Costello... the coronation of Australia's longstanding heir apparent could represent the best chance the Coalition has of staying in power, too....The appeal of a young and fresh Costello could change the media narrative and work wonders for a tiring Government that is seen as out of touch...having the highest respect for Howard means providing fearless opinions. It's time to hang up the pads.

The Coalition is haunted by the spectre of defeat. The authoritarian conservatives are sounding desperate. The Wilson Tucky option is up and running, even though Costello is soiled goods.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:09 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

September 1, 2007

personal ambition

It's sad to watch Peter Garrett become 'pulp mill Pete', but then he made the decision. Garrett wanted political power--to be Environment Minister--and he was willing to sacrifice his passion and environmental principles to do so. He knew what the ALP would do to him and he understood that the ALP Right had little time for his ecological politics. He was willing to pay the price.

Leak

Still, it is sad to watch the process of destruction under the guise of 'we support the pulp mill if it is world's best environmental standards' whilst refusing to say what these best standards are.

As Bob Brown observed: "I warned Peter that when he went into the ALP they would eat him up and spit him out and that's just what's happening."Many others did the same. Power is very seductive. Garrett is now required by the ALP to attack the Greens, embrace the three-mines policy, accept US bases, defend the forest industry: thereby renouncing, one after another, the distinctive positions upon which his career was built.

Secondly, 'Peter the myth' is different from Peter the person: after all, as a fundamentalist Christian Garrett voted against stem cell research.So he is a part of the NSW Right.

Public opinion is, if anything, supporting issues on the environment which are far to the left of the ALP. Garrett is now at odds with public opinion in Tasmania.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:39 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

August 30, 2007

big target strategy

In a discussion of Labor's IR announcement over at Blogocracy JWH of Kirribilli (the cheek) comments "This was Rudd's big chance to differentiate his party's policies from the coalition but he has essentially defered it to the next election"

As it turns out, the differentiation lies not in current policy, but future plans we haven't heard yet. We've already heard that the coalition has more plans for deregulating IR which has the potential to frighten a lot of people, including some who feel they're doing OK so far.

What might those future plans entail? How much worse can it get?

These sorts of questions undermine the devil you know, who can you trust, battler's friend and safe pair of hands arguments that have served Howard so well.

The (incorrect) impression that Labor will take over all public hospitals is already out there. Howard has taken over one, seemingly on a whim, and his future plans for others remains a mystery. One by one maybe? In what order?

On education we know Rudd plans an Education Revolution, which has a universal ring to it. Howard on the other hand wants history taught differently and the future of public education is anyone's guess.

You never know with Howard whether you're going to get a hospital takeover, a nuclear power plant or a plebiscite. He seems to make these things up as he goes along.

What we do know, and what Rudd will no doubt remind us of at every opportunity, is that he does have plans to further deregulate industrial relations. We don't know exactly what those plans are, but it's unlikely to be pleasant.

Commenter JWH went on to say that Rudd "is determined to have the election decided on personal image rather than policy" which seems to be true. But it looks very much as though the spotlight will be on Howard's image and Howard's unannounced policy. IR is still Rudd's big chance, he's just reorganised the location of the target.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:34 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

August 22, 2007

self sabotage

We haven't seen much in the way of discernible campaign strategy from either side of federal politics this week. Not directly anyway.

Howard hasn't been able to do much about Rudd, so he's taken Textor's advice and is apparently running against the states instead. Naturally the states are unimpressed, but it would be interesting to know how the state opposition parties feel about being frozen out of the nation's political future.

I wonder what they think of the prospect of being demoted to local council status? Or being made redundant altogether?

While the superficial level of things had a field day with Rudd's little accident, Howard was putting the finishing touches on a set of quite strange ideas. Who is his target audience here?

Among other things, political leaders are important symbolic figures for what we're accustomed to call ideologies. The need support from other public figures to build and keep momentum. No matter what we may think of Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Kevin Donnelly or Christopher Pearson, they've all contributed to Howard the Movement in their own ways. They've also put some distance between Howard the politician and themselves recently.

One by one they don't amount to a lot of influence, but in aggregate their loss is quite substantial.

As Gary pointed out, the bigger ideas in this latest announcement are recycled old ones. Preaching to the converted on economic management.

Meanwhile, Howard has effectively told his state coalition partners to start updating their CVs. Not the sort of thing that's calculated to encourage his supporters at a state level, or the constitutionalists who've been so important to him over the years.

Nobody worth their marketing degree would suggest that ordinary Australians will start calling themselves aspirational nationalists anytime soon. Unless they were joking. So he's not pitching to his usual battler demographic.

The pork barrel initiative is a tried and true strategy for both sides that usually serves incumbents very well. But it's not an overly bright way of keeping your issue focused buddies onside, or those state-level friends with medium or long term futures in mind. Marginals might get you re-elected, but if leadership of something substantial is your goal, surely you'd want to keep that something relatively intact?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:15 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 11, 2007

brand Howard

According to Dennis Shanahan in yesterday's column (thanks Nan), perception is everything. Putting aside for the moment what perceptions the title of the piece, "howard can't lose if he's seen as a winner", were meant to convey, Shanahan argues (via Textor) that "public perceptions and the polls feed off each other". It's an interesting idea that would probably sit nicely in a fashion theory framework, Finklestein's chic theory meets federal politics.

Is it too shallow to suggest that Howard is simply the political equivalent of long socks with sandals? After all, Keating's Zegna suits and antique French clocks are commonly thought to have worked against him, as is Beazley's weight, which is pretty shallow. By a lateral kind of extension, is it just unfashionable to be a Howard supporter?

Working on the assumption that the shallow end of politics and policy-free perceptions are significant, consider the relevance of being perceived as yesterday's man. What self-respecting fashion victim would be caught dead in last season? Or just as bad no matter the style, a passe label?

Shanahan also pointed out that "rattled was a term that recurred in the polling", which should come as no surprise given how often it's been used to describe Howard, his ministers and a few of his media supporters. Rattled has joined the ranks of several labels associated with the House of Howard, many of them quite catchy. Mean and tricky, clever and cunning, whistle and wedge, fear and smear.

It's not beyond possibility that the polls themselves are a signal to the trend conscious that Howard is just not the done thing anymore. Living in chronic fear is outdated. It's hard these days to move Whistle and Wedge even at a fire sale, but of course there's one at every social gathering - one of those tragics stuck in a time warp who can't tell hip hop from reggae, yet not sufficiently removed to be retro. It's cruel, but it's something Howard should understand well, given that built in redundancy is just one part of that glorious beast we call the free market.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:31 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

August 8, 2007

the shock of the Kevin

There has been much ado about Kevin07 in the last little while as old and new media come to grips with the new communicative strategies in our political landscape, or Kevinscape, perhaps. We are now, apparently, on a first name basis with our alternative prime minister.

Way back, it seems like decades ago now, Kerry O'Brien asked Rudd "Do you think Australia's ready to embrace a prime minister called Kevin?" Chuckles all round. If the comments on the website and the polls are any indication, they've moved beyond a mere embrace. Nor do they seem bothered at the notion of a campaign called Kevin, and they seems to like having a more or less direct line to Kevin himself.

Brand name Kevin has pulled off one surprise after another. We've seen the Maxine McKew surprise, the broadband surprise, the MySpace surprise and, for the policy police among us, the ongoing absent policies surprise. In retrospect though, none of this is really all that surprising.

In October and November last year the leftish literati were granted a special preview of "Rudd the thinking person's politician" in The Monthly. In October we learned that the more humanitarian aspects of religion make a good philosophical framework for governance in the interests of all, emphasis on ALL. In November we were treated to an analysis of the relationship between "free-market fundamentalism" and Howard's culture wars.

In the process we learned that Rudd is reasonably well read, intelligent and articulate. On paper anyway, where he refrains from forks, bridges and mangled metaphors. But the clues to his unfolding campaign strategies were also there in his multiple references to Quadrant magazine and, right up front in the intro "the prime minister's more prominent cultural warriors - including Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun and Christopher Pearson in the Australian".

Bracket out the content and the combined effect is a nod to the informed left, a refusal of divisive strategies and a poke in the eye for a lot of prominent Murdoch political journalists. He's continued along the same lines ever since, giving nods to the electorate bit by bit, refusing wedges and engaging with alternative communications channels. Whether this heralds a new era of political communications remains to be seen, but so far it's served Kevin very well indeed.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:30 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

July 30, 2007

ALP: why not some health policies

The formation of opinion amongst the Canberra Press Gallery is that the Howard Government's troubles are growing and that it is in electoral trouble. So it's time for the ALP to take the initiative and stop agreeing with Howard and putting forward its own policies that show it is a different brand from the Coalition.

Isn't the ALP marketing itself to us citizens as the party of fresh ideas and innovative policies? Or is it too early in the campaign for this?

Bill Leak

Why not some positive policies on health? Some fresh ideas? An indication about how the ALP will facilitate health reform? After all, the Coalition is not in favour of health reform (reformers damage people says Tony Abbott). So a new policy front can be opened up that would work to the advantage of the AL.

Their Fresh Ideas Future Economy policy document does favour a strategic emphasis on primary care and prevention:

The current health system is very good at providing acute and episodic care when people are sick, but it is not well equipped to meet the future challenge of the growing chronic disease burden....Federal Labor believes the best way to equip our health system to deal with the challenges of the future is to end the blame game and re-invigorate the role of the primary care system – the front line of the health system which provides health care to local communities.

However, the Fresh Ideas Future Economy document does not suggest how they plan to meet increased demand for health care services given both the limitations around dollars and resources, and the equity issues rising from those not being able to afford to pay for health services.

Update: 31 July
I've been attending the AHCRA health reform conference in Old Parliament House in fogged bound Canberra Monday and Tuesday of this week. The Coalition did not present at the conference. So they are not seen to be in favour of health reform. There is no need for it in their view, despite Abbott saying that the health system is a dogs breakfast.

Nicola Roxon presented yesterday afternoon, and her set speech was based on Rudd's fresh ideas for health. Roxon says that they have lots of policies under wraps she said. There were no sneak previews apart from Roxon saying that a Labor Government would ban the use of licensed characters such as Shrek as well as toys and giveaways, in promotions on television, mobile phone networks, the internet and in-store promotions to market food and drinks to children as part of a plan to tackle childhood obesity.

This policy opens up a clear difference between Labor and the Coalition — which has previously rejected policy advice to restrict junk food advertising to children.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:27 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

July 28, 2007

Rudd: beyond me tooism

Dennis Shanahan has an interesting op-ed in The Australian about Rudd's battle plan to become prime minister of Australia. It takes us beyond my me-tooism interpretation or Rod Cameron's avoiding the wedge. It is a plausible interpretation of the Rudd strategy.

Bill Leak

If half the battle is to get people to vote against the Government, then Rudd addressed this by turning the economic strength for the Coalition into a cost-of-living debate for Labor. Shanahan says that:

This was Rudd's first battle plan: convince voters not only that the Government was old and tired but also that it was not answering individual needs on expectations of material benefits, wasn't helping young people buy a house and didn't care about rising prices.

This is the mood for change strategy that creates doubts in voter's minds about the Howard government .

The other half of the battle is to tell people what the ALP stands for and to get them to vote for an ALP with fresh ideas. As Shanahan says:

Creating a negative atmosphere is crucial. It is necessary to cause doubt in voters' minds but it is more important to convince them to switch their vote from a known Government to an unknown Opposition. It is also even more difficult, having pursued people with unfulfilled expectations and ambitions, to then meet those expectations.

Rudd needs positive policies and fresh ideas about what to do about those unfulfilled expectations. That's the real challenge in the second half of Rudd's battle plan.

This implies that what Rudd stands for is not John Howard light.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:36 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

July 27, 2007

ministerial staffing

Anne Tiernan's thesis in Power without Responsibility: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard is that "in constitutional and managerial terms, the ministerial staffing system is out of control". Staffers are now more numerous and more ruthlessly partisan than ever. Some, she argues, are "de facto assistant ministers", more influential than many senior public servants and elected parliamentarians. Yet as staffers' power has increased, both they and their ministerial masters have become less accountable.

Chris Slane

She says:

The contemporary ministerial staffing system is large, active and partisan - far larger and further evolved than any Westminster equivalent. Ministers' demands for help to cope with the pressures of an increasingly competitive and professionalised political environment have been key drivers of the staffing system's development. But there has not been commensurate growth in arrangements to support and control it. The operating framework for ministerial staff is fragmented and ad hoc.

She says that though things are improving, ministerial staff receive little induction or professional development. Mostly they learn on the job. There are no 'how to' manuals, no briefings from former office-holders, no television shows or films.

An extract from the book at Australian Policy Online. In it she says that:

while institutions and actors have adapted to their presence, ministerial staff remain controversial; an important but somewhat awkward third partner in the traditional dance of executive advisory arrangements. To many they remain completely unaccountable. Their involvement in a series of controversies has raised questions about how effectively Australia’s Westminsterstyle political system accommodates their presence. These cases have exposed limitations and deficiencies in the minimalist framework developed to regulate the rapidly evolving roles of ministerial staff. Governance arrangements have not kept pace with ministers’ demands for more staff, and more active roles for them. Political practice has outstripped constitutional theory, creating uncertainty and confusion for public servants, for ministerial staff and ministers themselves.

They are “statutory orphans” and there is a lack of clear and shared understandings about the boundaries and parameters of their roles. What is needed is “a comprehensive set of standards for political staff… supported by appropriate mechanisms for reporting, oversight and sanction.”

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:56 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 21, 2007

Canberra watch: 'shit happens'

It's hard not to avoid the judgment that Howard's time has come. Twilight is falling, if not fallen. The public is waiting for Howard to move on, and whilst they do, the Coalition is starting to unravel. Or is 'starting to bleed' from the political wounds more appropriate?

As Tony Abbott says "shit happens". It is happening this time, for sure. The "shit happening" signifies a political end game for Howard's version of conservatism. Newspoll indicates that the Howard Government has suffered a dramatic slump in support among young Australians (up to age 34).The Coalition has just 30 per cent of these votes, a drop of 10 percentage points. And Work Choices is continuing to bite against Howard.

Spooner

As Keating once said the dogs bark and the caravan moves on. Though Howard has pushed the one nation xenophobe button hard, the caravan moves on. The Coalition dogs bark about "working families in Australia have never been better off" and the caravan moves on. So we have Tony Abbott positing the existence of "parallel universes", whilst others postulate voter disinterest. The caravan has moved on.

Well, there must be a bit of anger and frustration amongst Howard colleagues at the latest self-inflicted wound from Costello's remarks. The smiles of unity and confidence--'we are getting on with governing the nation'--are political masks. Behind the masks the emotional crazies must be forming in the unconscious of some of the Liberals, given the reality of the persistently bad polls.

They are being mugged by reality in the twilight zone. That is the time the dogs come come out to hunt is it not? So who is hunting who?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:52 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

July 19, 2007

Costello's blues

I'm in Hobart at an Allied Health conference, and I'm finding it extremely cold at night. The sun shines during the day but the wind is bitter. There is snow on Mt Wellington, which provides the backdrop to Hobart CBD.

I have had difficulty finding the time to access the internet. The internet option in my hotel room is not working, and I'm working from the public access computer in a side room with no heating. I'm freezing, and I cannot post images nor make comments on the computer. I will add them latter when they solve the technical glitch.

I haven't been following the newspapers or the news. because of the conference. I did see that the underground tensions within the Liberal party are sufacing with Costello saying that Howard was a poor treasurer, is an overspending PM, doesn't tell the truth and will stab you in the back. Apparently that's a rough summary of Costello's view. He speaks as frustrated dudded man in Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen book, John Winston Howard: The Biography. It's not going to go down well in the Liberal Party is it?

Can we continue to talk in terms of Howard and Peter Costello's prudent management meaning that they are better equipped team to put Australia on the right path than Labor? Will the Canberra Press Gallery now become more critical of the Howard Government, given the ongoing exposed divisions and dislike?

Update: 20 July
Michell Grattan in the Age says:

But it's now clear that if the Howard Government were re-elected, it would be near impossible for that relationship to remain productive (unless there was, heaven forbid, a "deal" for the transition). The first part of the new term would be spent seeing off Howard. So why, Labor will argue, elect a government where the PM will initially be a lame duck, and then gone? It's a fair point, nearly impossible for Howard to answer.

She says that Howard faces an unenviable dilemma. He has always said he would stay as long as his party wanted him and it was for the party's good. Is Howard in the position of Kim Beazley last year, when it became clear the public was no longer listening to him? Howard no longer stands for the future.

Presumably, the Liberal Party will close ranks around Howard and vent its spleen against The Age for publishing such damaging extracts from the Errington and van Onselen book.

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July 13, 2007

Canberra watch

It is beginning to look as if the Coalition is in trouble, doesn't it? Deep trouble. The atmosphere is changing. Small mistakes that mean nothing in themselves (forgetting names, smug lines on housing affordability and food prices delivered with a sneer) become symbolic, and an indication of the formation a new more critical way of judging. The Liberal talking points no longer resonate:

Clement

A political shift is beginning to take place--the anti-Keating political constellation or political bloc that was put in place in 1996 is now unravelling. The ALP is now setting the agenda and the Liberals are responding, whilst the Liberal attacks on Rudd are water off a ducks back.

Laura Tingle in the Australian Financial Review says:

There has inevitably been a lot of discussion in Canberra about the government seems to be making so many unenforced errors of late, from last weeks' oil debacle, to whether a travel warning to Indonesia was upgraded or reissued to forgetting the name of the candidate for Franklin. Many believe it is just a reflection of how rattled the government is: that ministers just never believed that Rudd would be able to get and maintain the traction he has, and that they had got out of the habit of anticipating an effective opposition.

Maybe. Tingle also canvasses the effects of staff changes in the Prime Ministers' office. Maybe again. She mentions the attack on the Labor state's economic credibility has been ineffective in attacking federal Labor's economic credibility.

But it is not just a question of political tactics and strategy is it? These are not biting in the electorate like they used to because of the melting of the 1996 political alignment or bloc. The fault lines are shifting, as can be seen from the graphs interpreting Newspoll at Possum's Pollytics. There are large movements in the primary vote toward the ALP with women deserting the Coalition.

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June 18, 2007

political frustrations

Gee the Coalition has just discovered high spreed broadband. Ministers are tripping all over themselves to sell their wonderful policy as they stumble over unfamiliar words like 'wireless connection', (WiMax) and 'fibre-to-the-node'; and then struggle to connect that to the claim that the incompetent, hypocritical ALP will destroy all that is good and decent and take the country to ruin with their broadband policy. It's confected tabloid outrage in overdrive mode (ALP raids the Super Fund, rob our soldiers and police of their superannuation, sob sob, doesn't rely on government being a partner etc etc).

Alan Moir

The heavy hitting Liberal message is not getting through as the ALP lead in the polls remains and it has dipped only slightly. Though The Australian carries on about 'Howard closing the gap' (Dennis Shanahan calls it a comeback for the Coalition and a polling breather) the Coalition is now sounding frustrated and worried in Question Time. The tone of desperation is still there despite the public mask of no worries, we've been here before, and we came out winners.

I guess that comedy form of political theatre doesn't work that well. It's not just the policy or the politics that counts as it's performance on the issues that counts.

Broadband in Australia is a disgrace, and the substance of debate in Australia over broadband has been close to a farce. The Government has been desperate to counter Labor's plans for a high-speed broadband network, which it says would be jointly owned by the taxpayer and the private sector, which might or might not be Telstra. The Coalition has now effectively neutralized broadband as an election issue, and probably just begun to understand the need for high-speed national strategy and infrastructure.

Government announced Opel, a joint venture between Optus and Elders, had been awarded $958 million from the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program to build a wireless internet network in regional Australia. In addition, Opel will contribute about $900 million of its own funds to the network. So the Coalition is subsidizing the mix of ADSL + wireless broadband to the bush. It's a cheaper option to the ALP one, and it appears to give a two tier broadband system --one for the cities and one for regional Australia.

Whilst Wi-Fi hot spots --as we have in Adelaide with Internode --provide wireless Internet access over distances of up to 100 feet, Wi-Max networks cover distances up to 30 miles. This means you browse the Internet on a laptop computer without physically connecting the laptop to a wall jack. Wi-Max has the potential to provide broadband access in rural areas that are too far from exchanges to provide wired or Wi-Fi access. It is appropriate in areas where people live too far from an exchange to get broadband, or the terrain is too hilly to lay cables. In that situation, Wi-Max, with its base station (1321) does something that DSL can't and it has an upgrade pathway.

Once Intel incorporates Wi-Max into laptops and PCs in the same way it currently builds in Centrino for Wi-Fi connectivity, then the cost comes down. So WiMax has the potential to deliver increased broadband competition, lower prices, and more freedom. That's a combination worth some consideration for regional Australia.

The announcement of the taskforce or panel to set the framework for a tender to build an urban fibre-to-the-node network that came without any timelines Canberra has recognized that that the network will have to be monopoly infrastructure, requiring legislation to prevent the building of competitive infrastructure. This means that there will be uncertainty about the eventual outcome, and this is likely to persist for a considerable period if anyone but Telstra wins the tender after the election.

It is highly unlikely that the Government subsequently destroy the profitability of Telstra's core business by allowing a competitor a legislated monopoly that displaces the copper network. So the two-year impasse over the construction of the network continues. However, Telstra will now be under pressure to put forward a proposal with access prices and terms acceptable to the Government and the ACCC.

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June 16, 2007

Canberra Watch

It is winter time in Canberra and it is cold. However, it is less numbing than listening to Joe Hockey, Employment and Workplaces Relations Minister, cram the words 'union thugs' and 'union bosses' in as many times as he can into an interview he's doing. It is no longer fun counting:

Alan Moir

The shock and horror jokes about trade union thugs monstering little old ladies receiving meals on wheels with hammers and sickles, which were designed for the daily TV news battle, did fall flat. Desperate stuff. Unsuprisingly, the jokes about democracy and corporate bosses engaging in paid advertising on industrial relations were few and far between.

The political debate is now pretty deadening, and as we move to closer to the long winter break, we have steady leaks of stories designed to disrupt the media strategies of both political machines; or the economy being seen as a finely tuned F1 machine only Costello and Howard can drive. Economic management is like driving a racing car and you cannot trust an inexperienced, ill-prepared Rudd/Swan team controlled by the unions to run the economy.Thus the politics of fear.

The economic debate is becoming the political debate even though Wayne Swan endeavours to make it a non issues whilst having something to say about the economy. So we have the ALP 's economic narrative about growing inequality and declining productivity needs to be broadened. Productivity underpins Rudd's policies for education expansion, broadband development as these are designed to raise the nation's skills.

Why don't they argue that the F1 analogy highlights the need to make the shift to sustainability and reducing pollution from coal fired power stations? Why not argue that Costello is driving the highly engineered racing car at high speed in the wrong direction? Don't we need a car that is fuel efficient? Non polluting? One that allows us to make our lives better? Do we really need a racing car economy?

How come the ALP, which is bursting with ideas, is not arguing this way? What are the parliamentary tactics of not asking about climate change ("the greatest moral question" of our time) and concentrating on fundraising at Kirribilli House? Trying to reinforce the image of John Howard as arrogant, out of touch, mean and tricky and as a leader "for the rich"?

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June 1, 2007

Canberra Watch

Parliament has a break for a week or so before it returns for the June sitting. So what happened in the last fortnight? I agree with Michell Grattin in The Age when she says that although Kevin Rudd and Julie Gillard have some serious problems with their IR policy they are not counting against them with the voters.

In contrast, Howard suffers from being seen as expedient. He looks all over the place because he is. He wants to appeal to voters as the leader who won't throw away jobs and growth for the sake of climate, while also sounding fair dinkum on an issue that is resonating.

Howard is also deeply troubled that he has not been able to get Rudd's measure, and that is affecting his performance.

Rocco

The Howard Government is increasingly isolated at home and abroad in its inaction on the climate change. For 10 years it has blocked a national emissions trading scheme. However, as Peter Hartcher says in the Sydney Morning Herald it has grown harder and harder for the Howard Government to pretend that global warming is some sort of confected neo-socialist Eurocentric moral panic.

The Howard Government now faces its last chance to get it right and that the task group report that Howard received yesterday is the platform for his policy announcement. Hartcher observes that:

Unfortunately, the report seems designed to help Howard not in dealing with the environmental threat to civilisation but in beating back the political threat to the Government.The report gives the Government licence to procrastinate for another few years. While it does propose the essential policy tools for dealing with global warming - an emissions trading system and targets for cutting emissions - it suggests that Australia take four years in getting around to it.This is all designed to allow Howard to commit in principle to fixing the problem, but without committing to any specifics before the federal election. Why? To give him licence to portray Kevin Rudd, with his target of cutting emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, as an environmental fundamentalist who will wreak economic devastation.

The difficulty with this strategy is that informed people in the business world reckons that Howard need to do something about climate change to actually cut emissions.

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May 28, 2007

some questions

I'm wondering if we have approached an 'its time' moment in the forthcoming federal election. Are we approaching and election that comes down to a simple choice: change or more of the same? Is this what is happening? So what do Australians really want right now? Change? Or more of the same?

Do Australians want more of the old white guys currently running the Howard Government? Or do they want something new and refreshing and more in tune with a modern liberal Australia? Are they tired of Howard's Australia? Do they want to say goodbye to the politics of fear? Do they yearn for, and desire to embrace, Rudd's Australia--conservative, Christian and progressive? Is this a safe change?

John Spooner

My judgment is that there is a mood for change and that the ALP is now competitive, finally. So things are finely balanced: the electorate is giving Rudd a bit of a look over whilst Howard is carrying a lot of baggage.

Rod Cameron on Lateline observed that it is finely balanced:

50-50, Virginia [Trioli ] but that 50 per cent… I've never had Labor at 50 50. I've got them up to 50 50 now... That's not confident, that is 50 50. But two months ago I was 35, 40 per cent chance for Labor. I think it's 50-50.

Cameron then gives a pen picture of the person who he reckons is going to determine the next election:

This is oversimplifying it but it's not distorting it. The person who will decide the election is going to be living in the outer suburbs of Sydney, or Brisbane or Perth, or a regional centre right throughout the country. He will be a skilled blue collar worker, or a contractor, or subcontractor or self employed. She will be a part time worker, clerical or sales assistant. They'll have a couple of kids who are going to low fee independent schools, they'll vote Labor at a State election, they had voted Labor federally in the past but haven't for a decade. They're telling opinion pollsters they're going to be voting Labor federally, but will they if Rudd is seen to be too close to the unions? This, I think, will be the actual key point.

Michael Kroger reckoned that Cameron had the first 80 per cent right.

Rod Cameron identified I think the symbolism is correct that those people have mortgages and they all have jobs with 4.5 per cent unemployment. They've all got jobs, got quite big mortgages and they've also probably bought or owned a property for some years, they've had increased equity in the property, they value of that property has gone up and they've made money, capital gains, tax-free. They've got money put away for holidays, for kids' schooling, for healthcare, et cetera, et cetera.

Kroger doesn't think the big issue will be whether or not Kevin Rudd is seen as too close to the unions. He reckoned that people have got a view Labor is heavily union-influenced. I think they've worked that out, and that will scare some and won't scare others. He says:

The big question is, are people, when it comes to polling day, when their finger, hand goes over the ballot box, are people going to risk Howard and Costello for Rudd and Wayne Swan? And I think this is the big issue which Labor yet, which we haven't seen in this campaign. It's been all about industrial relations. When it moves away from that onto the Coalition's main ground, I think that's when you're going to see a change in the polls.

So there you have it. IR or economic management are the decisive issues.Kroger is basically arguing that the economic fundamentals of low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and rising wages will turn the tide in the Government's favour as we approach the election. Cameron highlights the significance of a negative campaign depicting Labor's industrial relations platform as harassing and belittling small businesses and reinstating union power.

Note how climate change does not figure. It should, as it is not a beltway issue.

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May 25, 2007

tricky political moments

I saw the full Rudd interview on Sky News yesterday afternoon against the backdrop of government decay. Rudd handled himself well video He came across as a human being in difficult situation dealing with it as best as he could. Mistakes were made he said but they were rectified. He acknowledged that the situation with his wife's businesses and him trying to become PM was a difficult one for him.

Rocco Fazzari

Therese Rein's business --Ingeus -------takes unemployable people and makes them employable, and it does it on government contracts. So if Rudd were to become prime minister, then this would present an acute conflict of interest. So should Rein sell her life's work for his ambition?

Rudd's response was that this was:

...It's a tough call on a marriage. I am proud of my wife. She has built up her business from scratch. This is the age of professional women who run their own companies, who run their own lives, who aren't simply appendages of middle-aged men. I love my wife dearly.It is a very hard decision to say to someone prior to an election – and we don't know who is going to win the election – offload the businesed

Rudd presents him and his wife as a modern marriage--the partners live in "two different spheres" and had "separate lives" as far as their careers were concerned--- facing a contemporary dilemma. It is one for which they have no ready answer and needed to take advice. You cannot do better than that can you? So different from a Mark Latham blowing his fuse.

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May 23, 2007

the penny's dropped

The penny had to drop sometime didn't it. Along with mining booms and prosperity goes the economic insecurity caused by high mortgages, Work Choices and global warming. Another advertising campaign to rebrand Work Choices into a goody goody brand to make us feel safe and comfortable in the Lucky Country isn't going to cut it.

Matt Golding

The realization is that its more than an ALP honeymoon. Something has shifted in public opinion at a deep level. Despite at the lack of overt antagonism to the Coalition unease is now working its way through the Coalition ranks as the clock ticks. The Coalition is looking embattled.

Standing on their economic credentials for a decade of sustained prosperity is not going to be enough. Nor will the fear campaign -'Rudd the destroyer' will tear down our Mcmansions and send us all to the workhouse --- bite deeply.

People must be concerned that federal funding for private schools will increase from $5.8 billion to $7.5 billion over the next five years, whilst funding to public schools will only rise from $3.1 billion to $3.4 billion over the next five years. After all 70 per cent of parents still send their children to government schools. As Ross Gittens points out in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Today, the budget shows public schools getting 31 per cent of the money while the private schools get 69 per cent. But public schools still have two-thirds of the enrolments. Mainly because of Commonwealth grants, funding for non-government schools is growing at three times the rate of spending on public schools, which is far in excess of the growth in the private sector's share of enrolments....Get this: the minimum grant per student paid to private schools ranked as the least needy is now far higher than the grant per student paid to public schools.

The education revolution is one where the commonwealth is quietly moving to a position where they look after the private schools and leaving the public schools to the states. It is a substantial public subsidy to private schools, who continue to charge big fees.

I presume that the anti-public pro-private prejudice of the members of the Coalition is such that it holds public schools are for losers whilst private schools are for winners. Just like public transport.

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May 12, 2007

fiscal conservatism?

I missed Round 2. I was reading about hedge funds and private equity and so I'm not even sure what Round 2 was about. Rudd's response to the Costello Budget? Round 3 is definitely about economic credibility, which is deemed to be the foundation stone of political credibility. Economic credibility, apparently depends on being a fiscal conservative.

So what does a fiscal conservative mean these days? Running budget surpluses? Continuing the transformation of the Australian economy from an inwood-looking manufacturing based one to an an outward -looking services dominated one? Enhancing market competition, deregulating the economy as well as an open economy? That is more neo-liberalism isn't it?

How about reducing government taxation, no government debt and reducing government expenditure? Small government, in other words. That's quite different from Howard's big government conservatism. isn't John Howard a fiscal conservative? But John Howard doesn't fight for spending cuts. He stands for spending as much money as he can---a Big Spender. Aren't Howard and Costello taxing and spending Australia's economic prosperity from the mining boom?

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May 9, 2007

Costello's 2007 Budget

So it was a politics style budget as expected, the centre piece of which was the higher education endowment to help the long-term funding of tertiary education. That's good politics, as it cuts the ground from under the Rudd-ALP focus on an education "revolution".

The tax cuts for Howard's battlers, and spending up big over a range of portfolios, such as the environment, child care, transport and fighter plans, which cover the black spots where the ALP has some traction, land another punch on the ALP.

It was a cleverly crafted budget. Costello even gave the impression of more spending to come to ease the political pressure points, such as those around climate change. So is smirks all round the Coalition ranks judging from Question Time, the Coalition has the cash to fill the policy gaps identified by Labour.

The ALP is going to struggle to attack the package. Obvious gaps were structural reform to improve productivity or address the causes of climate change. Or broadband, for that matter. Or tax reform? Or export growth to address the current account deficit. Costello could have used the huge increases in revenue to do something to address these in a significant way and link them to CoAG's National Reform Agenda. But he didn't.

Take the much heralded water initiative. The Budget avoids the tough issue of buying back water licences. Only 30% of the $3.1 billion allocated to the buy back will be spend in the next four years. The National's stand in the way of reform, as they refuse to acknowledge the reality of the overallocation of water licences by state governments. Costello's budget does nothing to change that, as there is just $27 million for buying back overallocated rights in 2006-7.

And energy? Well, all that has changed is that Costello has restored a programme that had been cutback in 2006---doubling the rebate for solar panels for households. Big deal. Especially after spending a decade denying the existence of global warming.

However, the political reality is that the ALP needs to win 16 seats to govern in his own right. That’s still a big ask. Queensland needs to turn to do it. The Coalition has yet to sniff defeat. Will water and climate change help turn an election? Maybe in the marginal seats of South Australia? Will they do so in Queensland? How many seats there are swinging to the ALP. I heard 8 had at a meeting in Canberra yesterday. No doubt the ALP has lost some in WA.

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April 25, 2007

political messages: economic goodies

There is no need for the Howard Government to run a scare campaign on the economy against the Rudd ALP is there? The recent inflation figures are on the low side. There is an annualised inflation is 2.4 per cent, which is within the Reserve Bank's mandated maximum of 3 per cent.

So the federal budget will provide the platform for tax cuts and big spending. The old economic management team of Howard and Costello deliver again. It is the economy--growth and jobs---that is the key. Reform (eg., climate change) can be postponed until tomorrow. We voters can to continue to party and aspire to investment properties and overseas trips.

These are the messages from Canberra.

Well, the messages that I see and hear as I return from five days in the wilderness without any media at all. Oh, the scare campaign will be put into play for sure. It will be Rudd the destroyer of the good times. Rudd the moral zealot. He's a destroyer of prosperity and freedom because his strings are pulled by the union bosses.

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April 6, 2007

ignoring the message

Well, it does look as if the tide is finally turning for the Howard Government. It is not just the wreckage of the Bush administration, its failure in Iraq, and the collapse of the neo-con's vision for a New American Century that aimed to to reshape the world, which is dragging the Howard Government down.

Allan Moir

The Howard Government look as if it has a past by date as they are now shooting themselves in the foot, especially on developing an economic rational response to the effects of global warming on Australia. The climate is changing and Australia cannot continue with business-as-usual as if there is no tomorrow. Even business knows that things have to change.

Fear is working against the Howard Government on this issue, not for it. All its past talk about strong leadership to provide the safe shield for us to get on with our lives highlights how it is not providing leadership on global warming. It even refuses to make the link between the drought and climate change, and it is still preoccupied with looking for enemies (loonie greenies etc) to demonize and shoot down. The ground is shifting and cracking and wedging the ALP on climate change amongst blue collar workers looks like refusing to embrace new ideas to respond effectively to a changed world.

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February 17, 2007

national security

The Canberra Press Gallery holds that John Howard's two big trump cards are national security and the economy, and that these provide the bedrock of his support in the nation. However, these are not cast in stone, especially the former. Dripping water on national security can have some effect, since Howard's position on Iraq is whatever the Bush administration's is, and he is locked in the time warp of either being 'f'or the US or for the terrorists.'

Rocco

That position is difficult to defend because it does not square with the retreat of the US in Iraq to defending Baghdad or the brutal reality on the ground in Baghdad. The hard lines around the Howard 's national security fortress are jagged, chipped, and cracked.

Two cracks that have appeared in the walls around Howard's position are the scary stories about terrorists (eg., David Hicks) aren't resonating like they used to. Similarly with Howard's debating Australia's role in Iraq and when it might end last week in Parliament. Iraq doesn't seem to have the same national security ring about it as before. What is being exposed is that it is more about supporting the alliance with the United States and less about helping the Shi'ite Iraqi Government deal with the Sunni insurgency.

Howard's either you are 'f'or the US or you are for the terrorists' looks an isolated one, when the US House of Representatives rejects President George W Bush's Iraq troop build-up, and by implication, passes a negative judgment on Bush's overall stewardship of the war in Iraq This rejection is a symbolic but politically potent challenge to Bush's unpopular war strategy. A more assertive opposition Congress increasingly places Bush (and Howard) on the defensive.

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February 13, 2007

a bad hand?

It's about an election isn't it. The trans-Pacific stoush between John Howard and US presidential candidate Barack Obama over comments by the latter about the US withdrawing from Iraq in this speech looks to be a desperate attempt to play the wedge to keep the Iraq issue alive as an election issue. Howard' strategy with his ‘helping al-Quaida’ smear is designed to retain the core conservative support around national security at a time when Iraq is increasingly being seen as an unpopular war in Australia.

Bill Leak

But Howard looks defensive, sounds shrill and acts rattled. Howard has in effect launched a broadbrush attack against the Democratic Party, which has control of the Congress thanks to the popular vote against the Bush administration and its Iraq war a few months ago. The Democrats may very well have control of the White House in two years' time. So it's not about the Australia US Alliance--it's about an alliance with the Republicans. No doubt Howard will turn the attack onto the ALP in the near future.

I cannot see how Howard's partisan attack is about defending Australia's broader national interest. Howard has studiously avoided even the slightest hint of criticism of US foreign policy even the torture side of things. Howard's argument, that withdrawal of allied forces from Iraq by March 2008 as advocated by Senator Obama would be a victory for al-Qaeda, ignores that the insurgency is homegrown and primarily run by Sunnis, fighting to retain their power in Shi'ite Iraq and the American occupation. This quite different from the war on terror. US military officials say that it is the Shi'ite militias, particularly the Sadrist Mehdi Army that are the greatest security threat in Iraq".

Howard's other argument, that 'If America is defeated in Iraq, the consequences for the West will be catastrophic", universalizes a specific situation: a civil war in Iraq between Shiite and Sunni. Many Sunni areas in Baghdad are virtual "no go" areas in the capital that are "off-limits" for American and even Iraqi soldiers. The response to the US clear, hold, and build" stratregy in Baghdad by the guerrillas is to melt into the population and awaited new opportunities to attack the military occupation. The effect of the US strategy is demolished buildings, deserted neighborhoods, and sectarian torture on both sides.

Howard and Downer speak about destabilising and destroying Iraq in the future tense as though they are oblivious to the daily carnage from the civil war going on there.

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January 6, 2007

politics + cricket

Parliamentary political life is in recess for the next month or so. Of course, the politicians were at the cricket and making sure the television cameras depicted them as being there.

Bill Leak

It's clever isn't it, the way cricket and politics are interwoven. Many of the commentators in the Canberra Press Gallery have been offering advice to Rudd about what to do to stay in the game. They see politics as a game in which the politicians and journalists are the players. We citizens watch the game on our television sets.

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December 8, 2006

Canberra watch

The response by the Howard Government to the situation in Iraq, the mid-term Congressional elections and the Baker report is that nothing has changed apart from some minor adjustments to tactics. That was the line being presented throughout Question Time in the House of Representatives all this week to sharp questions being asked by a re-energised ALP. There were few doubts about Iraq, but many self-serving delusions about the Middle East on the Government side.

Leunig

Who do they--Howard and Downer--- think they are kidding with all the bluff and bluster about chaos descending, running up the flag of appeasement, and the Baker Report justifing their position of business as usual etc etc? That report amounted to a repudiation of the President's democracy project in the Middle East? Do they take us citizens to be fools? Do they think we don't read and make judgements? The ground of Howard's moral certainity is a wasteland of death and destruction, not power used for virtuous ends through clean hands. Howard and Downer remain enwrapped in illusions.

The Iraq Study Group's recommendations on Iraq are a substantive change of strategy and an implicit rejection of Bush's foreign policy. The recommendations involve troop withdrawals, negotiations with Iran and Syria, shuttle diplomacy to get a peace process going between Israel and the Palestinians, and no mention democracy for Iraq or any other country in the Middle East.

Of course, Howard and Downer's bluff and bluster hides the fact that they now talk about stability in Iraq. Democracy has been quietly dropped. It is no longer a goal. It has gone the way of WMD. The Howard Government is looking increasingly isolated now that the ambitious project to reshape the Middle East and the whole international order in terms of Pax America has collapsed in the sand of Iraq. Howard remains enwrapped in the dark shadows of Iraq.

What remains unquestioned in Australia is the false neocon notion that the royal road to Jerusalem lay through Baghdad.

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October 16, 2006

nostalgia

A little bit of humour to start the work week off. AWB and its kickbacks to Saddam Hussein all seems so long ago doesn't it? Of course, what is missing is the complicity of the Howard Government in the scandal. Only AWB was ever in the spotlight. Remember, the Howard Government said that it had no knowledge of the kickbacks.

Cathy Wilcox

No doubt AWB will come back into the political spotlight with the publication of Commissioner Cole's findings in late November, and the issue of the single export desk, which the Nationals continue to support.

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October 15, 2006

Canberra Watch

As John Howard begins to clear the legislative decks for the federal election next year there is a growing unhappiness about the Iraq war, increasing insecurity about the changes to the industrial landscape and a developing anxiety about the effects of climate change in the electorate. There is the growing possibility for a rise in interest rates before Xmas due to inflation risks and pressures, the ALP has been doing well in the polls, and the Howard Government is becoming sensitive to the effects of climate change in Australia.

These are interesting times for Canberra watchers as the Howard Government endeavours to control the political outcomes of pressing issues:

Pryor

So we have a $837m skills package designed to respond to the skills shortage through a packa g of vouchers and wages support for older apprentices combined with extra investment in high level education and training. It is a political document designed to neutralize the persuasive arguments made by Kim Beazley amidst Labor's scare campaign on the importing of foreign workers by Australian firms in order to overcome the skills shortage across the nation.

Beazley argues that importing cheap foreign worker effectively denies opportunity to those who need it most---young Australians and, because foreign workers are being paid less than their local counterparts, it's lowering pay and conditions for everyone else. Jason Koutsoukis, in an op-ed in The Age argues that Beazley has a good targeted campaign:

With voters already anxious about the impact of the Government's industrial relations, Beazley has skilfully weaved in fears about foreign workers taking local jobs as part of the problem. It's a classic wedge between the two policy positions Howard has been able to hold together for so long and upon which he has been able to build such a broad constituency of middle-class voters.On one side is Howard's economic liberalism, which strongly favours globalisation, one of the consequences of which is for local industry to import foreign workers when it wants to. But on the other hand is Howard's social conservatism, which has been inclined towards policies that keep foreigners out and appeals to those who want to preserve Australia as it is.

This scare campaign frightens exactly the same group of voters that Howard won over in 2001 with his tough stance against asylum seekers.

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October 8, 2006

a new political culture

From what I can gather conservatives used Quadrant's 50th anniversary dinner to claim victory in Australia's culture wars. The long march of the left (hard and soft) through our institutions in civil society has been rolled back. Gee, I thought that the conservatives considered themselves to be an embattled minority.

Geoff Pryor

What has been manufactured by the conservatives is a "Howard hating" elite which controls our schools, our universities and the ABC, and the strategy has been to generate fear and loathing of these soft Left despicables among the "aspirational" classes in suburbia. Questioning $200,000 degrees and cuts in funding to universities are dismissed as elites! Now that is demonisation. Some conservatives even say that the Left has formed an instinctive alliance with radical Islamism against conservative traditions and values! I guess that is one way to construct another conservative moral panic.

UpDate:9 Oct
As Robert Manne observes in an op-ed in The Age says that a new kind of political culture, even a new kind of Australia, has begun to emerge.

During the past 10 years Australia has undergone a profound conservative-populist transformation. The Howard Government has abandoned the quest for Aboriginal reconciliation. It has ended discussion of the meaning of multiculturalism. It has closed our borders, by the use of military force, to all those seeking refuge by boat. It has adopted a foreign policy of a more uncritically pro-American kind than was seen even in the era of Menzies. And, by its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, it has turned its back on the international fight against global warming.

Manne says that the most important failure of Labor since 1996, has been its incapacity to construct an attractive, alternative vision of the future of Australia that is capable of undercutting the neo-liberal, neo-conservative, patriotic story. It fails to a target the two incompatible strands in Howard's story: the unrestrained economic individualism, the other social conservatism. Citizens are told simultaneously to devote their lives, on the one hand, to material acquisition and to work, and on the other, to the preservation of family, community and church.Manne says:

For citizens, in the chaos of contemporary society, the incommensurability of these values eventually becomes clear, not, of course, in theory but in the impossible pace and pleasurelessness of daily life. In the acquisitive, individualist, consumerist society of neo-liberal theory, time is short, human relations are short-changed, families fracture, the needs of children are ignored, identity is shaped by consumption, losers are treated with contempt, and levels of insecurity, drug dependency, even mental illness, increase.

That a Beazley ALP cannot construct a story for the electoral middle out of that contradiction indicates the current poverty of the ALP.

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September 13, 2006

a cheap shot?

It's not just politicians super is it, where the biff and bash of politics gives way to matey consensus. It is also around national security, as illustrated in Beazley's proposal that immigrants and tourists pledge allegiance to "Australian values" .

I understand the strategy--it is designed to negate the wedge politics of Muslim bashing being practised by the Coalition. But it comes close to embracing integration as assimilation. Which values are to be included in the pledge to abide by Australian values? Multiculturalism as equality? Hardly. It's only respect for different religions and cultures. How are we to understand 'respect'? Why in terms of a mateship visa. See what I mean? More of an analysis is given here.

If Australian values are to include respect for women, then Shane Warne cannot enter the country can he? Or is just Muslims that have to respect women? If so, then the Beazley-ALP comes close to dog-whistling on Muslim-bashing.

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August 30, 2006

'keeping the bastards honest'

Don Chipp's phrase 'Keeping the bastards honest' is a good political slogan and program isn't it. It has become a key part of political culture and shapes how we think about Canberra. I guess that a lot of the commentary around Don Chipp's death yesterday will be about whether the Australian Democrats, the political party he founded in 1977, can arrest their own slide into political oblivion as a centrist force in federal politics.

I presume the consensus judgement will be that Chipp failed in his attempt to refashion the political landscape, given the slow fading of the Australian Democrats after they lost the balance of power and so their ability to negotiate better outcomes by taking the rough edges off either party's policies, as well as force inquiries and so put their own issues on the agenda. The Canberra press gallery has written off the party as a viable, centrist political force.

Sean Leahy

What should also be remembered in our reflections on the history of our political culture is that Chipp left the Liberal Party in the 1970s because it was becoming increasingly illiberal in its turn away from the progressive or social liberal tradition. The social liberals who are left are marginalised and under threat from the conservatives. If there is any committment to liberalism, then it is to a truncated market liberalism counterbalanced by a strong and heavy handed state.

Sure there is a gap on the political spectrum for a party appealing to the educated liberal-progressive middle class and, at this stage, it looks as if the Greens may fill it. At the moment they position themselves to the left of the ALP and not self-consciously sitting in the middle between the two major parties endeavouring to "keep the bastards honest".

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August 27, 2006

the changing face of politics

Politics is changing isn't it. Many accounts of this change argue that ideology is no longer relevant and that the old distinctions of left and right have become fuzzy, if not actually become meaningless. These accounts are limited given the partisan nature of the Right these days, as expressed in the various culture and history wars, the war on terror, tough border security and social conservatism.

John Cain, a former Premier of Victoria, describes the changes in politics differently. He says:

The electorate now is about me, me, I and my. The electorate is much more ego-centric, focused on itself, reflecting the market economy and everything is seen in terms of what is in it for me." [voters think like this:] "I want to pay less tax, I don't want to be burdened with having to think about anything, I just want to go out there and enjoy myself. It is a consumer-driven, market-oriented society at a level we have never seen before. There is no ideology anywhere.They (voters) wouldn't know how to spell it.

Cain is right to highlight the deep effects of the market on politics which we have been witnessing for two decades.

However, Cain downplays the shift to conservatism in the electorate and both the major political parties that is increasingly expressed in the the mixing of religion and politics. The battleground between left and right is less about the economics and is more about culture and values. The culture of the ALP, for instance, is deeply socially conservative, despite its ongoing social democratic commitment to the welfare state (public education and health).

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August 11, 2006

Question mark over the Liberal Party

Is this what is happening to the Liberal Party in Australia in the light of this event? It is unbecoming being liberal?

Alan Moir

Being unliberal generally means turning your back on the Menzies tradition of the Liberal party. Is this what is happening? Conservatism has taken over from liberalism, which has been reduced to a market liberalism?

It does look like it when 4 Liberal rebels have to put their political careers at risk to defend human rights and the importance of international law in relation to assylum seekers.

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August 9, 2006

Canberra Watch

I watched Question Time in the House of Representatives yesterday. The session was mostly about interest rates and petrol prices.It's an explosive mix as petrol prices are feeding through the economy causing inflationary pressures.

I was suprised by the change in tone in the House. The Howard Government was defensive, subdued, and nervous. In contrast the ALP was upbeat, jolly and feisty. They were confident and enjoying themselves! What a change in atmospherics. It was more akin to a carnival created by the ALP.

Question Time was about the economy, economic management and economic credibility. The old Coalition line of the 17% interest rates under the governance of Hawke/Keating started looking a bit thin given the increase in the proportion of debt being carried out by households.

The ALP has a good position: mortgages are costing households more now than in 1989 when interest rates were 17%.

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July 11, 2006

endgame

Ian McLachlan - the former defence minister and the third man at the leadership meeting on December 5, 1994 between John Howard and Peter Costello - released the note he has kept of that meeting:

"Meeting Monday Dec 1994. Undertaking given by JH at a meeting late pm in PC's room that if AD [Alexander Downer] resigned and Howard became PM then one and a half terms would be enough and he would hand over to PC. IMcL."

Mr McLachlan said that Mr Howard had made the offer to ensure Mr Costello did not challenge him to replace Mr Downer as leader in 1994. Howard and Costello came to an arrangement before Downer was tapped on the shoulder. So we have an agreement but not a deal? Calling it simply a discussion on the leadership succession is gilding the lily. Costello does not have the numbers to challenge Howard in 2006. So Costello tells the truth, adopts the high moral ground and achieves credibility at Howard's expense.

Matt Golding

So Howard has taken an extra couple of years and turned them into a decade in power. The leadership tussle represents a political crisis for the Coalition---a fracturing of its unity and an effective political partnership.

The Howard-Costello era is over. The endgame happens at a time when the Howard Governemnt faces an big challenge in selling its controversial industrial relations policy, and is experiencing an unprecedented restlessness among ministers and backbenchers. So the government starts to come apart.The Howard era is indeed drawing inexorably to a close.

So what happens now? Howard is still the Government's best chance of winning an election next year.
Costello moves from cabinet or his Treasury portfolio? This is the kind of politics the loves--it will feed on this issue for days. And that adds to the tensions within the government doesn't it--since all their actions will be assessed in the context of the leadership. Disunity is death.

Meanwhile CoAG beckons.

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July 7, 2006

taking control

If unemployment has fallen since the 2004 election, then interest rates have risen twice and inflation is nudging the 3 per cent mark. Another interest rate rise looks likely, as fuel prices keep driving up inflation, before next year's election.And Labor looks as if it has Howard on the back foot, thanks to the industrial relations laws which are irrevocably tied to Howard.

Geoff Pryor

The political landscape is shifting, is it not? Just a bit? You can see the cracks in the earth from the "triple whammy" assaulting the electorate: rising interest rates, high petrol prices and an aggressive new industrial relations policy. Some commentary at philosophy.com about political receipes.

I prefer Pryor's pirate imagery to that of the horse race favoured by mainstream commentators. The former captures the friends/enemies conception of politics and the seizing of power.

Update: 10 July
Ross Fitzgerald, in an op. ed. The Australian, also say that the ground is finally moving under the decade-long federal Government:

For 10 years Howard has occupied the middle ground. He has skilfully managed an alliance of voters spanning the ultra-wealthy through to the socially conservative, economically vulnerable battlers of the suburban fringes. The Prime Minister's IR changes strike right at the heart of this coalition, giving Howard's battlers permission to look elsewhere for a middle-of-the-road leader who understands and will support them. It's an opportunity to reconsider what has become an almost habitual vote for Howard. And it's an opportunity federal Labor won't miss.

Beazley has the experience and resilience that conservative voters require for reassurrance.

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June 24, 2006

Canberra watch

I would have thought that the AWA's has given federal ALP an issue to cut through on and to force the Howard Government onto its own turf--industrial relations. Isn't that cutting through, or as Geoff Pryor suggests getting the message out?

I appreciate that Big Business has gone in hard, with its key message that the ALP is taking Australia in the wrong direction --back to the past, whereas the future is towards a deregulated workforce and direct relationships between employee and employer.

But the ALP now has a toehold in the national economic debate--it can talk about the skills crisis and productivity, can it not? This is a doorway to address the issue of the enterprise culture based on the furthering of competitveness, creativity and innovation.

That is no small achievement for the Beazley ALP, which used to be roundly condemned for providing a small target---for pissing on the opponent and then pissing off.

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June 13, 2006

ALP toughens up

Well it was foreshadowed wasn't it. Despite the wavering Kim Beazley and the ALP will abolish John Howard’s Australian Workplace Agreements--'the poison tip of John Howard's industrial relations arrow.' Federal Labor has also made industrial relations a centrepiece of the fight with John Howard's Coalition. It has given the ALP what it needed: a strong support base with voters, a clear differentiation from John Howard's Coalition and a potent weapon-- AWA's dismantling work conditions and lowering wages --- that resonates in the community.

So we have the political as a conflict between political enemies.

Bill Leak

But the unions only form 20-25% of the workforce and AWA's only cover about 2-3% of the workforce. It is unclear whether the ALP is revisiting the past on industrial relations, or looking to the future.

There were promises to pay TAFE fees for training the traditional trades, to encourage kids to investigate those trades through a "Trade Taster Program", and to pay TAFE fees for trainee child carers. This addresses the workplace crisis facing Australia - the shortage of skilled workers. That Australia is so short of skilled workers is a failure of government policy and pushing this issues is good policy. .

Yet this is lost in the rhetorical turn to 'jobs for Aussies' instead of importing workers, skilled or unskilled, to ensure the human resources are there to enable the West Australian mining boom. This turn to economic nationalism with tis roots in the socailly conservative blue collar base backs away from Australia as an open economy.

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June 1, 2006

water politics+political marriages

So the political marriage between the Nationals and Liberals is off before they even got to the Church. The feds were not interested in the shotgun Queensland marriage to save the Queensland Nationals from a steady decline.

Geoff Pryor

What suprises me in all of this is the inattention to the privatisation of the Snowy Hydro-electricity Scheme---or more acccurately Snowy Hydro Ltd. The politics of water consumption is a e key issue and is a tailormade issue for their rural populism and conservative values. Yet the Nationals are nowhere to be heard.

Jack Waterford in The Canberra Times says that:

On an issue like the Snowy Mountains Hydro sale, Bill Heffernan is playing the role that a smart National Party, keen for signature points of difference with the Liberals - ought to have played.

The Snowy scheme is a national icon - as important and symbolic in the minds of urban Australians as much as rural ones - but it has a particular significance to the rural sector, not least those who live in the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Darling Basin - that part of the continent within which three quarters of the population, and almost all of the National Party constituency lives.

He's right on that. One consequence of the sale of Snowy Hydro Ltd, says Waterford, is this:

The sale of the hydro scheme does not mean the new operators will be able to fundamentally change river flows. These are, to a degree at least, fixed by intergovernmental agreements which will continue. But the new operators will have considerably more latitude and incentive to operate the scheme for the prime benefit and purpose of maximising their energy return rather than meeting the needs of water consumers downstream.

The latitude is spelt out by Graeme Davidson in The Age as follows:

The first is the seasonal timing of environmental and irrigation flows when they might clash with the privatised company's duty to its shareholders to maximise its returns from the sale of peak electricity or holding water in its upper storages to use as insurance for electricity retailers against price spikes that can drive electricity prices up to the $10,000 MWh cap.

Secondly,

...the three governments are committed to increasing the environmental flows from the present dribble to 21 per cent by 2012 and 28 per cent at some unspecified time in the future. This is water that will not available to Snowy Hydro for electricity generation. The additional flow is supposed to be made available from improved irrigation efficiency. The uncertainty surrounding the likelihood of achieving the extra environmental flows is likely to be increased with privatisation.

Yet the Nationals are not saying boo. Shouldn't they be jumping up and down in the bush? Or have they gone too far down the free market road to care?

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May 12, 2006

Canberra Gaze

As Alex Millmow points out in the Canberra Times the Costello Budget announced the impossible - tax cuts and spending increases. Milllnow says:

Economics was never supposed to be like this. Making do with less, not coping with superabundance was what it was all about. This is the fourth successive budget when the electorate has received some form of income tax cut or increase in welfare payments. Many now have the embedded belief that a budget surplus means tax cuts.The "gimme, gimme" budget has arrived. And there will be a repeat of the magic pudding next year, and, all going well, on an even bigger scale. The thought of using the surplus for the social good, for infrastructure, for training and education, will become more outlandish over time. Were the Government ever to renege on the transfer of the booty, the electorate would sulk.

Such a budget does not leave much room for the ALP to respond in the Budget reply. All eyes were on Labor, given its self-destructive tendencies. Would it build on its message about needing to lift the nation's productivity by offerring some policies as opposed to carping?

Unfortunately I missed Kim Beazley's address in reply on free-to-air televison last night. Reading it this afternoon his 'Pact with Middle Australia' he homed in on the nation's skills shortage, lack of places in parents' child-care and the failure to develop a high speed broadband network for businesses and households. Apparently it was a good performance with an emphasis on security: the government will protect you from changes in the workplace and in the market.

So Beazley differentiated himself on education and child care, but where was health? Is not a squeezed Middle Australia also concerned about health and wellness?

What was not addressed by both sides of politics was a strategy to rein in the current account deficit, which is running regularly at more than 6 per cent of gross domestic product and which has led to a national debt of about $500billion, still rising. Both sides of politics seem to think that we don't need to worry about these huge imbalances.

We should. As Millnow points out:

Recall how the British used up their North Sea oil bounty with nothing much to show for it in the end. Sure, Australia has oodles of resources, but our external account is forecast to be in deficit this year at 6.25per cent of GDP. This is when we have the best terms of trade in 30 years.Our actual trade deficit - exports minus imports - has been in deficit for 48 months straight.You'd think that with record export prices, this, at least, would be in the black. But no, the income effect arising from the terms-of-trade bonus encourages a spate of spending on imports.

Yet we have silence.

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May 1, 2006

Keating: the ALP and economic management

The political wisdom is that the ALP lost the last election (2004) because it failed to contest the Coalition on economic management, and so feel victim to the interest rate scare that appealed to fear about the ALP not being able to manage the economy.The ALP did not respond to the fear that suburban Australia would lose their homes. Those on $70,000 a year, with the highly geared McMansions, and two kids in private schools vote for 'keeping the economy strong'. They vote Liberal.

This is not the Tory working class scenario. Informing the 2004 election are the background changes flowing from the economic reforms of the pro-market Hawke and Keating Government and globalization. This is transforming the economy, and it created a whole new class of economic agents--subcontractors, consultants, home-based office workers etc are the big winners in the 'new economy'. This new middle class has become agents of their own economic future and they vote Liberal.

In an extract from George Megalogenis', The Longest Decade, Paul Keating and John Howard, published in today's Australian Paul Keating, the former ALP leader, says:

What's happened to the Labor Party since 1996? It has gone back to the old anvil. It's walked away from financial innovation, from the opening up of the economy and the whole meritocracy model of widening its own appeal to single traders, to sole operators of business, small business.

The post-1996 ALP has given away the economic credibility it had earned during 1983-1996, and it failed to modernize its policies under Beazley.

Megalogenis' says that the former prime minister argues that deregulation created a new type of voter, the former blue-collar worker turned small businessman. But Labor, in vacating the field of economic reform, allowed this socially conservative voter to move into the Liberal camp. As Howard observed to Megalogenis the new upwardly mobile middle class rejected Keating's social policies for a republic and reconciliation:

They're [the self-employed voter] are a natural fit for me. The thing is, a lot of those people are socially conservative, they don't like all this trendy stuff.

They're now rusted on Liberal and they listen to Howard's language of national unity. That is the significance of all the values stuff in contemporary politics. The new upwardly mobile middle class is the new moral middle class.who live in a world bounded by their experiences of work, families, the neighbourhood and a taken-for-granted nationalism.

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April 10, 2006

the no-nothing Ministers

The Government's response to the argument, that ministers in the Howard Government had a responsibility under international law to ensure Australia did not transfer funds to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, is that the federal bureaucracy and relevant Ministers were merely a "postbox" for forwarding wheat contracts to the world body.

The Government's "we didn't know about it and therefore can't be held responsible" response is an implausible one. The Ministers in effect flicked the responsibility to the UN whilst they engaged in UN bashing in the run up to the war with Iraq.

Alan Moir

What we know from the work of the Cole Inquiry is that AWB is in the dock. So what of the ministers who turned a blind eye to the kickbacks in the UN oil-for-food scandal program? We know that their primary concern was trade, preventing the loss of wheat exports and protecting AWB. Hence they, and their departments, evaded all responsibility to ensure AWB was not paying bribes. Despite all the warnings they didn't act.Therein lies a problem.

Felicity Johnston, the UN's former chief customs officer who vetted oil-for-food contracts with Iraq, has said that:

"Every nation has a responsibility absolutely under (UN) Resolution 661 to ensure that nationals comply with that resolution. It states that all countries should ensure that its nationals do not provide transfers of funds to Iraq. Now I did not make that up. That's what it says in resolution 661 in black and white. Mr Vaile may try to wash his hands of it, but they do have a responsibility to ensure that their nationals abide by the rules and the regulations."

Australia's obligations under resolution 661 were enshrined in the Customs (Prohibited Export) Regulations, which placed an obligation on the Foreign Minister or his delegate to satisfy himself that exports to Iraq did not breach sanctions.

So much for the Government's evasion of responsibility. We know the Government's response. Downer and Vaile will say that none of the warning cables were drawn to their attentio prior to the Volker Inquiry. At the Cole Inquiry this week they will put on a public performance of anger for the way the public service ‘failed’ its responsibilities.

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February 19, 2006

AWB: hard to believe

The Wheat scandal. It really is hard to accept that the efforts of Saddam Hussein's regime to make money from the oil-for-food program were not well-known in Canberra quite early on.

Matt Golding

On the one hand, the Howard government was publicly involved in supporting UN sanctions against the Sadam Hussein regime in Iraq; on the other hand, it was doing everything possible to ensure the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) sold wheat to the same regime. The price for the paradox was kickbacks to the regime, which the AWB willing paid. The kickbacks continued with the provisional government after 2003 to prevent the Amercians from capturing a slice of the Iraqi wheat market.

Yet the line of defence has been that no Australian minister or bureaucrat even twigged to what AWB was doing ---systematically breaching UN sanctions. Nor was anybody in Australia responsible for ensuring that AWB wasn't breaching UN sanctions. So nobody in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) was informed by AWB or investigated the breaches?

Nobody was doing their job.That 's the obvious implication. That is hard to believe.

Isn't this an indication of a culture of concealment that seeks to evade accountability and checks on its power? The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is playing a blocking game. All the indications show that AWB had kept DFAT in the loop and that DFAT knew what was happening.

I presume that the fallout from the AWB kickbacks scandal will continue to spread through Coalition ranks opening up divisions within, and between, the Nationals and Liberals.These fissures are becoming ever more explicit around AWB's monopoly status---its continuation as a single desk that holds the power of veto of all bulk exports. Losing a wheat market is what really counts isn't it?: not kickbacks, breaking UN's trade sanctions, or the failure of accountability. Trade is what is placing the squeeze on the unity of the Coalition.

Presumably documents (emails) will begin to surface that will indicate that Canberra knew what was going on, despite the assurances of AWB that everything was okay. It will be a case of drip, drip, drip and a steady revision of the stories being told by senior bureaucrats and Ministers in Canberra. That will happen when Commissioner Terence Cole's inquiry turns from its focus on AWB to the tacit knowledge of the kickbacks by the bureaucrats and ministers. Presumably, we will begin to hear stories that they knew bits and pieces earlier than they are currently admiting.

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February 3, 2006

of course they knew

Whilst I've been away holiday in Tasmania for the last week I see that the inquiry into the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) is closing in around the Howard Government:

Alan Moir

The Government's message has been that it didn't know about the kickbacks and that the AWB had never let the Government know it was involved in kickbacks.

Of course we citizens suspected the Howard Government knew about the kickbacks, bribes and corruption. And the evidence?

The evidence is beginning to drrip. The first thing that I saw in the media when I stepped out of the wilderness was an old headline that Michael Thawley, the former Australian Ambassador to the US, had successfully lobbied Congress against a Senate probe/investigation into AWB's deals in Iraq. Thawley, a Howard man, would have been acting on instructions from Canberra to make representations to Senator Coleman to stop his subcommittee investigating the AWB scam. Thawley's riding instructions would have been to keep the lid on AWB's Iraq kickbacks.

Tis about time the scope of the Cole Inquiry into into Australia's alleged abuse of the UN's Iraq oil-for-food program is widened to include the conduct of Howard Government's Mnisters, MInisterial staffers the Canberra bureaucracy and the diplomats. Tis about time some of the AWB's senior executives come clean and blow the whistle. They've got nothing to lose. Their careers are finished, as is the AWB as a single desk market for wheat.

I've no idea what the ALP has been saying. I presume they've been going for it hammer and tongs looking for the smoking gun?

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January 27, 2006

political shrills

It is hardly the political shrills from the Treasurer surely:

Alan Moir

It is mostly the political shrills from Nationals that can be heard around Canberra these days. They are tearing themselves apart over the independence shown by Senator Barnaby Joyce and the defection of Senator Julian McGauran. The latter joined the Liberals because he judged that the Nationals had no future in regional Australia.

And they don't. They only pretend they are the party of the bush, or even regional Australia. In reality they are an appendage or tail of the Liberal Party. The Nationals do not have a clear independent sense of direction or a future that is worth fighting for. That's why they are on the decline into political irrelvance, for all their huff and puff. They are going to be wiped out by the LIberal Party because there isno distinguishable philosophical or policy difference between the two parties.

Senator McGauran had admitted as much at a media conference.

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January 20, 2006

political renewal?

So Senator Robert Hill, the current Defence Minister and resolute social liberal, has finally been pushed out of Cabinet and is to quit politics. The appearance is that he has been promoted to become Australia's ambassador to the UN, that it's a great job, Robert Hill is very capable, he's done a great job etc etc:

Paul Zanetti

That leaves Hill's right wing enemies (Downer and "Minchin) more firmly in control of the SA Liberals.

This retirement also opens the way for a Cabinet reshuffle. Does that mean the fourth Howard Government will have a substantial new look - one that encourages new ideas and policy directions?

Dennis Shanahan in today's Australian says that next weeks reshuffle will go along these lines:
Unless either of them asks for a change, and it is unlikely they will, Costello and Downer will remain in their portfolios. Therefore the real changes will occur with the other senior ministers: Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Nick Minchin and Brendan Nelson.

These are big changes. How do they play out? Shanahan has some ideas on this. Abbott, he says:

...could fill the Defence portfolio and crack down on the bureaucracy of Defence, which is its weakness. Workplace Minister Andrews, a Victorian, could take over Welfare and Family Services. Nelson, who like Abbott is energetic, driven and prepared to philosophise about his portfolio, could go from Education to Health.

There are a lot of could's there, isn't there? Where does that scenarrio lead Nick MInchin, who is likely to take over Hill's post as Senate leader? Here's me thinking that Minchin was considered to be the frontrunner for Senator Hill's vacated defence portfolio. But then how would I know?

IWhat I do know is that I do not see these kind of changes in the senior LIberal ranks as a fostering of new ideas or new policy directions. It's Malcom Turnball, a mere backbencher, who is tossing ou the ideas, and these are evidenced based. He would give the Howard Government a new look.

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December 25, 2005

patiently waiting?

This does not bode well for the federal ALP, especially when it is coupled with low interest rates, low unemployment and a strong economy:

Bruce Petty

I notice that Jennifer Hewitt has an op. ed. in the Friday edition of the Australian Financial Review saying that the ALP is travelling well under Beazley. It is increasingly confident, as the tacticians judge that the forthcoming grief around the Howard Government's industrial relations reform to be a vote switcher.

Isn't that the old strategy of waiting for the Howard and Costello to slip up?

Remember the fisaco last time on tax cuts? The ALP was seen to oppose them, due to the clever strategy of Beazley, Swan and Smith. They were decisively out manoeuvered.

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November 29, 2005

corrosive effects of the IR legislation

We know that the industrial relations bill will enable those on high incomes to win greater benefits whilst those on low and middle incomes stand to lose, especially in times of economic downturn and recession.

Louise Dodson in the Sydney Morning Herald draws attention to "the corrosive effects of the IR legislation, and suggests why the slow burn may well have political fallout for the Coalition. The legislation:

"...will produce losers as well as winners and set the two constituencies of the Coalition - economic rationalists and social conservatives - against each other. The Coalition has been successful in recent times partly because it has managed to gain support from both constituencies."

The politics is this:

Nowadays the National Party, just as much as Labor, represents the poorest electorates. Its constituents are unskilled, blue-collar workers, with higher income farmers these days voting Liberal. National Party constituents have most to lose from the industrial relations changes and fear them just as much as Labor's supporters. On top of this they worry the legislation will drastically affect family, community and church life. Church groups and leaders have been some of the strongest opponents of the legislation for the same reason.

This is different from the fear of industrial relations changes not being enough for Labor to win the next election. It brings us to a return of 1996 when the economic rationalists and social conservatives split asunder and the abandoned the Keating ALP.

Will this happen to the Coalition in 2007?

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November 14, 2005

Gough Whitlam--yesterday's man

Gough Whitlam is a great Australian-----a national treasure. But he was a centralist who wanted to reduce the power of the Senate and increase that of the executive.

Leahy

Sorry Gough. I don't buy it. The Senate needs to be made stronger not weaker.

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November 8, 2005

A circuit breaker?

This is a tough representation of Blairite Labor in the UK:

Martin Rowson

Does it apply to an embattled Beazely Labor in the Australia? It does to a lameduck Bush in the US as the dirty war rebounds on Washington.

Beazley Labor stands strong in opposing the IR reforms. The uproar in the theatrically rowdy House of Representatives last week expressed that outrage and conviction.

Has this outrage connected with the concerns of Howard's battlers about their work values: fair minimum wage, decent working hours so families can spend time together, penalty rates and shift loading being eroded by the IR legislation? Has it given the ALP the electoral circuit breaker it needs to counter Howard's clever manipulation of the political agenda? What are the focus groups saying? Are the previously rusted-on Labor supporters, who transferred their allegiance to the Coalition in 1996, reconsidering their options? Can Beazley maintain the rage, highlight the 'them and us' class divide and talk in terms of 'for all of us' ?

As federal Labor slowly defines the issues on which it intends to campaign my concerns are with the increasing dominance of the machine men of the Right in Beazley Labor. Apart from the IR shakeup and vocational skills training they seem to to go along with the Howard Government and present a small target on other issues. Why not stick their necks out on the sedition laws in the counter-terrorism legisation? Has the ALP right the political courage to do this?

What they present at the moment is a walking backwards into postmodernity.

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October 15, 2005

IR: the battle for the hearts and minds

I left a fog-bound Canberra early Friday morning burdened with the Canberra flu bug. AS I was very feverish and had a splitting headache, so I was barely able to read the giveaway Canberra Times I had picked up as I was boarding the plane for Adelaide.

But I do remember seeing this Pryor cartoon about workplace reform:

Pryor

Good eh. It shows what is at stake to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Australian citizens.

And I vaguely remember an op. ed .by John Warhurst about the Howard Government has been forced to openly side with the bosses to counter the effective union campaign supported by the ALP. Instead of governing for all of us the Howard Government is now openly seen as the party of capital fighting the party of labour.

Who said that class has disappeared or no longer mattered? What has happened to the moral middle class ? Or the conservative myth of the all powerful liberal elites and liberal media?

That means the struggle about IR is about increasing the profits for business at the expense fo labour not increasing productivity of labour.

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September 18, 2005

truth telling in politics

I'm finally back on deck. I've been very busy in Melbourne at meetings since early Friday and I had little chance to post until now.

Over the weekend I did mange to catch the Latham interviews on Enough Rope on Thurday night and Lateline on Friday night--but not he legal manoeuvrings. I saw a more measured Latham to the over-the-top one of the diaries. The latter is being characterised by the ALP and media as being so full of resentment, anger and envy that he can only unleash a river of bile on his former colleagues.

Suprisingly, it is the Murdoch press leading the charge against Latham--- the rant and ravings of an embittered madman is the line. Well, I'm with Latham on this. He's telling the truth about the way both the ALP and the media conduct their business. He is opening things up about the political culture for all to see. And we should look long and hard.

Latham has wounded Labor. He meant to. And he has good reason to do so given the appalling way that it treated him. Unnamed ALP sources going on about Latham being a rat is not going to cover up the deeper insight that we will gain into the poisonous workings of the federal ALP. That is the value of Latham's diaries.

Will the ALP openly address what we citizens know? Address the divergence between what Labor members felt about the way the factions operated and the machine politics of the Labor's factional system? Or will the factional machine regain control of the ALP and ensure the conformity of the factional ALP culture?

I didn't have the time to read the op ed. commentary in the print media. Some think the issue is just not worth it. From what I've seen by way of the headlines the general tendency has been to continue to cast Latham as a mad dog----to attack his flawed character, exaggerated claims and anger. They do not address the issues about the brutality of machine politics, the dysfunctionality of the ALP, the corruption of the media, the breakdown of community or the decay of ethical life, or the way that political parties are becoming out of touch with their members and with the electorate.

That kind of response ---character destruction not policy debate ---is the game that is played by the political culture. That says something does it not?

I have yet to see any critical self reflection by the media about the way that Latham has exposed the media and the Canberra Press Gallery conducts its business in terms of the drip feed, innuendo and rumor based on unmamed sources.

How many of the Canberra Press Gallery will defend, endorse, or welcom the truth telling in the Latham Diaries about the way journalists work; and then be willing to stand up to the heat from their unmamed sources and colleagues? The strategy of the corporate media, like that of the ALP's political establishment is to demonise the Diaries and Mark Latham.

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September 3, 2005

It's on--destabilization

Whilst the factions in the NSW Liberals continue to eat one another with relish, judging by the "tax debate" or flareup between Howard, Turnbull and Costello of last week, the leadership battle in the federal Liberal Party is now on in earnest. Costello's current campaign to display his breadth is about destabilising the status quo.

The pressure is building and the movement and manoeuvring amongst the leadership group for the deputy leadership is now quite open. Tis countdown time.

Political success and power. It is so seductive. It is like a narcotic. You crave the adrenalin more and more. Why ever more power? For its own sake, not for the good of the country.

Have you noticed that there is very little substantive policy talk about improving the productivity of labour through clever thinking and innovation? A smarter Australia is not on the agenda.

That means that we ordinary citizens observing the political plays in the media, are obliged to continue to work longer and longer hours to ensure economic growth and Australia remaining internationally competitive. We now spend more time getting to and from work, getting ready for work, worrying about work, losing our jobs, and looking for other jobs.

In the global economy leisure is now squeezed around work. Leisure is the time off the job. Often leisure means recovery from work, replenishment for further work, stress management and consumption. Gone are the days of the easy life. Work is a responsibility (a moral duty). We have a moral obligation to work to contribute to the wealth of the nation, and human fulfilment comes from work.

We feel that we are being squeezed for time. And we don't like it. Our increased standard of living has been purchased with a more demanding worklife. Much of what we spend our money is compensation for all the work.

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August 16, 2005

cutting deals

It is hard to follow what is going on in Parliament these days without being able to watch the House or the Senate on cable televison. Here we are setting up an office in Kingston and we cannot even get a video feed of the action in Parliament on cable (Transact) in the most trendy suburb of the capital.

The cable has yet to be laid and the ABC's new digital channel does not offer the parliamentary video feed. Maybe, Foxtel's satellite service is geared to regional markets, and they offer a live parliamentary feed through the digital Sky channel.

So I am in the same position as in Adelaide. The best that we can get on television is question time on the ABC. Or we can get is a blurry video feed on my computer screen. So I am reliant on the packaqing provided by the newspapers, radio and TV, just like everyone else.

I did manage to catch the cheeky Telstra $5 billion investment plan, in which Telstra invests $3.6 billion on the fixed-line phone network and broadband, (rather than mobiles) provided the federal government also puts in $2.6 billion,institutes a light regulatory regime and blocks operational separation.

Last night I caught a media moment of Barnaby Joyce saying he'd pretty much got the money he was after for telecommunications in the bush and he was willing to cut a deal, once he'd checked in with the Queensland Nationals. He implied that he was okay with the package that Helen Coonan was taking to cabinet today.

Joyce deserves credit for what is currently on the cabinet table. But he is cheap. He's happy with $3 billion--combination of a $2 billion trust fund and a $1 billion upfront investment---out of around $32 billion.

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August 10, 2005

more sound than fury?

The day the Howard Government has control over the Senate arrived yesterday. Celebrations all around whilst the talk is about Coalition unity

The legislation to ban universities charging a compulsory fee for student amenities and services, ranging from sporting facilities to dental treatment will shortly come before the Senate.

There are divisions over voluntary student unionism in the Coalition ranks about the principle that students should not be required to join a university "union" or guild; and whether universities should be allowed to charge students a mandatory levy for sporting, health, and other facilities.

I'm not sure where the rebel senators stand on these two issues. Barnaby Joyce's concern is about how university sporting facilities will be funded if compulsory student union fees are abolished.Does that mean compromise on voluntary student unions as is likely to happen with the sale of Telstra?


Pryor

I noticed that the rebel senators said nothing in the new Senate yesterday when the Howard Government reduced the number of hostile questions it fields each day, and it gave itself more time for the soft queries (Dorothy Dixers) from its own side.

Why should they? They are part of one happy family even though the Liberal and National Party MPs are scrapping publicly, as they should.

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July 5, 2005

shifting political ground

The Howard Government has now gained control of the Senate. The Democrats have now lost official party status. The Nationals gain Senate party status. The Greens have effectively aligned themselves with the ALP.

Leahy, After the Deluge

Maybe not.

The Nationals are looking pretty frisky with Senator Barnaby Joyce talking the classic Senate talk of House of Reviews, federalism, and Senators representing their region. That checks and balances view is the response the centralisation of industrial relations in the hands of the federal government. Even the WA senators are edgy.

The Nationals are also talking about driving hard bargains on Telstra, industrial relations, voluntary student unionism, and retail competition.

A more flexible labour market may well have a detrimental impact on families. If households are placed at risk through unfair dismissals by bastard employers using the new IR legislation, then that pulls the rug under quality family life. The neo-liberal IR reforms then start to undercut the value of family life in a globalised world. Are not family values resolutely defended by cultural and political conservatives?

Now that discloses a good space for the ALP to play some classic wedge politics. Will the ALP conservatives have the strategic smarts to do this?

Or will it be the Nationals in order to regain lost popularity and rebuild their profile?

Remember National Senators, such as Barnaby Joyce, and Family First Senator Steve Fielding, were elected by electoral Senate constituents traditionally opposed to neo-liberal economic reforms and very wary of the proposed Coalition bills, especially the sale of the core network of Telstra. If both Senators want to be re-elected they will need to keep that constitutency onside.

That means they cannot afford to become clones of a Liberal Party that will contest their Senate seat in 2010. That means they will have to maintain their minority profile to avoid political death.

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June 30, 2005

Lobbyists and Democracy

Carmen Lawrence gives us a good description of the importance of lobbyists in the political life of federal Parliament. I have commented about it at philosophy.com in relation to public reason and the work of Carl Schmitt.

Carmen decribes the impact of lobbyist within Parliament House:

One of the most obvious features of national political life is the steady stream of lobbyists - individuals and organisations - who turn up in the corridors of Parliament seeking to influence the policies and decisions of their representatives. Some are motivated by their own or their shareholders' interests; others by a desire to achieve particular outcomes which they believe will be of benefit to the society or some more narrowly defined sectional interest. Most people would regard such contact as a legitimate and basic right in any democracy.

Well, as a political advisor to a federal Senator (Meg Lees), I often sat down and listened to briefings from a variety of lobbyistsas part of my job. I found many of them to be very informative and helpful in the legislative side of work an in terms of their understanding of issues. After my holidays I will become one.

Carmen,like myself, is uneasy about the inequalities within this aspect of liberal parliamentary democracy due to the resources and access. She says:

...it disturbs me - as it should all citizens - that there are some who are more equal than others. This is, in part, due to the fact that some - mainly business - groups are able to devote substantial resources to the task. They wine and dine MPs and provide them with "corporate hospitality" as part of carefully crafted lobbying built on personal contact and expensive "information" campaigns. And no public record is kept of these proceedings.

The implication of this inequality is that it:

.... gives rise to the not unreasonable suspicion that this hospitality and the large campaign donations made by the same players may help to open doors. It's almost certain that they do.

The Liberal Party now charges big bucks for access to Ministers at a variety of its events. A lot of groups (ngo's) are thereby excluded. So there is corporate lobbying and lobbying. This tendency is only goingto intensify after July I when the Coalition is incontrol of both houses of Parliament.

Lawrence points out the significance of the corporate lobbying behind closed doors. :

...we are aware of only a small proportion of the lobbying that goes on, there is a reasonable suspicion that a great many more decisions are being shaped without our knowledge and without the interest groups having to face public scrutiny of their claims and arguments.

So democracy is undermined by both the access that money can buy and because we are in the dark as we don't know how much is being spent to inform, persuade and cajole our decision makers.

The Australian Parliament is not serious about the need for MPs and ministers to be transparent about who is knocking on their doors. There needs to be accountability, public scrutiny transparency and regulation of this persuasion industy.

How should this be done?

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June 24, 2005

Canberra observed #3

My weekly Canberra observed post was yesterday, but this Moir cartoon invites another post on the same topic:

The Australian Democrats have lost their party status to the Nationals, and it is hard to see the Democrats regaining this status in the near future. The Democrats imploded and they are now just a bunch of four independent senators with no balance of power. They can do a bit of committee work and sit and watch the legislation roll through the Senate.

What the new Senate signifies is a generational shift in the political landscape with the disappearance of the centre and the shift to the right (Family First and Nationals) and to the left (The Greens).

This shift will not ease the long term decline of the Nationals as their percentage of the electoral vote continues to decrease due to them being unable to connect to the retired/seachange urban voters in the eastern coastal electorates. The traditional National electorates are under intense pressure from Independents and the party could continue to lose a number of seats as they have failed to differentiate themselves from the dominant Liberals in the Coalition Government.

The judgement on the ALP is best expressed by Laura Tingle in her weekly Canbera observed column the Australian Financial Review:

...the bitterness inside the ALP is deep, a legacy of factional hatreds and grudges from leadership challenges in the past, reminescent of the paralyzing divisions that plagued the Liberal Party during its long years in opposition.

Is this some form of renewal?

Moir's cartoon says nothing about the Australian Greens. They continue with their strategy of giving moral lectures about the ethical shortcomings of everybody else---we fail to live up to the moral law---- and being morally pure. The Greens failed to give any valedictory speeches to the 14 Senators who are leaving on June 30; or even to pay tribute to work their fellow Tasmanian Senators did to make Tasmania a better place.

I considered that a moral shortcoming. It suggests how the Senate is being used by the Greens as a platform to lecture the rest of us on our ethical failings.

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June 5, 2005

Canberra observed by Laura Tingle

I appreciate that Lara Tingle in the Australian Financial Review reckoned that the Howard Government is all at sea, and that recent events indicate that things are getting bad for the Coalition:

Matt Golding.

What Tingle said was this:

The Howard Government doesn't make public policy, a close if slightly jaded observer noted recently, it does issue management.

She then listed a number of crisis management issues ---Schapelle Corby, drought relief, slowing economy, infrastructure, mandatory detention--that indicate "the signs of a bad administration being caught out."

I'm not convinced apart, from the fraying around mandatory detention, since most of the other stuff is newspaper headlines.

Let me respond:

The Howard Government continues to make public policy, a close if slightly wearied observer noted recently, even as it is caught up in issue management.

We have Costello's Intergenerational Report work on the economic impacts of aging (a fiscal blowout), the National Water Initiative, industrial relations, the CoAG agreements on health reform, the various Free Trade agreements etc etc.

Me thinks our senior journalists do not read, nor are they interested in, public policy. Their conception of politics is media headlines. What they observe is the media observing Canberra.

Tis a world of distorting mirrors.

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May 27, 2005

it makes sense

Now this article makes a lot of sense. Consider what Sean Barratt says:

People argue about what constitutes the so-called third sector but the truth is that people are putting their time and money where their beliefs are. Membership and support for non-government organisations are increasing; the opposite is the case with traditional political parties.

Research continues to show that trust in non-government organisations is greater than in business and politicians. Many activist groups do not have traditional membership structures but coalesce around an issue.

I would argue that with the Howard Government gaining control of the Senate in July federal Parliament is not the place to be. Howard and Costello will rule ruthlessly, the ALP will be mercilessly mocked and taunted, there will be little questioning or revision of government policy, and the theatre of politics will become a farce.

Why bother working in such a climate when the policy work is going to be done by the ngo's? Given the Howard-Costello onslaught against the ALP--eg over the budget tax cuts---the political parties will increasingly be run by the political operatives in search of clever tactics, images, headlines, wedge politics and a clever line for the media.

The muscles are being flexed whilst the buying of influence, favour and access to ministers at those expensive fundraising dinners will only increase. Parliament becomes a political market.

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May 12, 2005

the media's budget

The media's representation of the Costello budget is all about the tax cuts and the politics of the ALP not passing the Government's legislation. This representation is marked by gaps and silences.

One silence is the way the media has ignored strategic economic policy. The basis for any meaningful expansion of Australia's export capacity lies in the shift to a services and information economy from one based on physical goods. Should not facilitating this shift be important, when Australia continues to run a huge current account deficit at a time of record high commodity prices and increasing mineral exports to a booming Chinese economy? What happens when there is a slowing of growth, or a slump in demand for our mineral exports? Silence.

A gap exists in the politics of cutting welfare dependancy:

Behind this lies another strategy to reduce the welfare state because it is outdated. This is Peter Saunder's argument. He, is from the Centre of Independent Studies, and he is a long time advocate of welfare reform--kicking the welfare habit--and he usually wears the mask of a social policy intellectual fighting the lefty academic welfare establishment's defence of the welfare state.

In his op.ed. in the Australian Financial Review strange Saunders welcomes the government's welfare reforms as a necessary step in cutting welfare dependency, reducing the welfare rolls, and creating a self-reliant society.

He says that:

Single-parent lobby groups have predictably attacked the changes, but requiring parents of school-age children to look for part-time work is asking no more than is expected of anyone else, and it promises to improve the quality of their lives as well as benefiting their children.

This is strange response. Single-parents are not opposed to working part time to earn extra money. They want to work but they require childcare places to enable them to do so.

Child care is a key, not the "shirking" by dependent welfare dependents. Saunders is silent about the need for childcare. He is also silent about employers not really willing to employ single mothers who are available only part-time and constantly worried about their children because they have no childcare. By not mentioning this Saunders is implying that single parents have a shirker character: "needy" addicted people who refuse to pay their own way and demand the government provides them with an income.

Saunders, in tactily implying that the single parents are shirkers, is wearing the mask of an idealogue. The mask of the public intellectual has slipped.

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May 8, 2005

Federal budget tensions

If the week before a federal budget is a strange one--a mixture of political restlessness, bureaucratic lockdown and keen business anticipation---this time around it is overlaid by a big shift in the policy and political landscape.

The work of the Howard Government in the next term is reforming both the welfare-to-work system and the nation's industrial relations framework; putting Telstra up for sale; deregulating the media; maanaging a slowing economy; and resolving the rapid development of Liberal Party leadership tensions into a brawl.

Will it be Costello's last budget? Aah the hares are up and running. Who will deliver the 2006 Budget? Nelson? Abbott? Downer? Now that gets people thinking.

The first step in the new reform agenda is the Costello Budget, due to be handed down next Tuesday. Judging from from the leaks, it is structured around reforms to welfare-to work system. The media leaks indicate that it is not going to be a big bold reform, due to the protracted Cabinet battles on the issue. So is ithe budget the first instalment on the well thought-through fourth term agenda that can be delivered with a Senate majority? Or is it another sign of policy drift?

The media leaks also indicate that despite the promised "sandwich and milkshake" style tax cuts to soak up the big surplus, all is not going well on the welfare-to work policy. There appears to be too much severe stick and not enough sweet carrot.

Too much stick means instruments to move people off pensions (tougher criteria for pensions, less genereous indexaton of pensions, greater penalties for long term unemployed who break the rules).The ideology to stop the men with "bad backs" abusing the welfare system. The central thrust is to contain the cost of pensions by cracking down on the long-term unemployed, who are simply seen as shirkers.

Not enough carrot means investment to ensure increased workforce participation through vocational training, wage subsidies, child care for sole parents looking for part-time work,better tapering of nenefits as income increases, extra support for pensioners facing cuts and incentives to business to hire people with disabilities or mental health problems. If the stick is about punishing the unemployed, then the carrot is about helping the long-term unemployed overcome the substantial barriers they face in getting a job. That will cost a lot of money.

I'm only guessing what the protracted conflict within the Government over the welfare-to-work reform has been about. I am presuming that the hardline Kevin Andrews, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, has adopted a tough stick (punishment) approach based on presuming that 25% long-term dole recipents are not making a serious effort to get off welfare; one that enphasizes the outsourcing of welfare to the Job network agencies.

I am presuming that Howard and Costello want a greater emphasis on the carrot.

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April 21, 2005

hard road ahead

I was having a coffee in Adelaide this morning on the way to work and I glanced through today's AFR. Bob Hogg, a former national secretary of the ALP, has an op.ed which outlines a bold new reform agenda that he reckons the Howard Government should adopt.

I'm always interested in the policy advice the ALP's ex-movers shakers offer to their political enemies. Peter Walsh and Gary Johns come to mind.

Hogg says that his reform agenda is one that requires a lot of political courage, but the country requires it. The opportunity to implement the tough new reform agenda has arrived as the control of the Senate passes to the Howard Government this July.

That caught my eye. What then is the agenda? No no, it's not about Australia going nuclear to ensure sustainable energy. Hogg's concern is state taxes and the GST. Hogg's policy advice is:

Howard should increase the rate [of the GST] to 12.5% and seek to make it variable by plus or minus 1 per cent. Food should be included in the GST regime, with an appropriate compensation package. In return, the states would have to agree to to either remove or substantially reduce stamp duties on housing, as well as removing other inequitable taxes.

Wow! An ex-ALP national secretary is saying that? That makes him such a good neo-liberal bedfellow with Senator Minchin, the Finance Minister. Nay, Hogg is further to the right than Minchin in defining what 'economically responsible' is.

Now this is not a clever way to help defeat the Howard Government by raising gungho reform expectations within the Government that would then be difficult for Howard to manage. Hogg actually believes this approach to tax reform is the right and proper thing to do for the country.

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March 12, 2005

the winds of political change blow as...

With the Senate coming under the control of the Coalition after June, the jostling within the Liberal camp has begun.

The money is on Costello to succeed Howard with Downer, Abbott and Nelson angling for the Deputy Leader's position. This is now becoming the main game within the Coalition.

The conflict/battle over the economy has settled into firing shots from entrenched positions. These were dug in last week. Mark Davis in today's Australian Financial Review (p.22) describes the opposing positions in the economic warfare well.

The ALP is saying that:

...the good times fo the past decade are a result of Hawke and Keating government reforms. But the Coalition has failed to embark on a new round of reforms. The reform fatigue has led to skills shortages and infrastructure capacity constaints. These bottlenecks have produced a double whammy of slowing economic growth and rising interest rates which are hurting families.

Therefore the ALP is the only political party with good economic creditionals.

Really? We are going to see a lot of reform after June 30th. And what about the current account deficit and the need to build a knowledge economy? The silence on this means that the ALP's political arrows, which are being fired at the Coalition's citadel, are only designed for newspaper headlines, not for good economic policy.

And the Coalition's position? Costello's defence has three fronts.

[First] The labour shortages... are signs of the government's success in getting unemployment down to levels not seen in more than a gentration...[Secondly] only the government has the solutions for the current economic problem of demand outstripping supply..the governments plans to further deregulate the industrial relations system will relive the supply side constraints by lifting the economy's productivity and ensuring that labour shortages do not spill over into inflationary wage rises.

Not the Costello talk about the shortages of labour not the shortages of skilled labour or the need to invest in vocational and tertiary education to enable a knowledge economy.

Costello's third front is a diversionary one. Mark Davis says that Costello:

....has mounted a foray deep into his enemy's flank, accusing the state and territory Labor governments of squandering a multi-billion-dollar windafall of GST revenue and failing to invest in improving the nations's post and transport infrastructure.

Conveniently forgotten is the Commonwealth's failure to invest in education and infrastructure.

So what has been sidelined is the need to foster a "Silicon Valley"in Australian: to start a culture of real innovation and real value creation based around smart engineers, clever thinking, technology geeks, investors, R&D, innovation etc. Australia will continue to import technology and intellectual capital and pay for it by continuing to dig minerals out of the ground.

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February 27, 2005

Big changes on the way

The ALP victory in WA was a good one and well deserved. Unlike the federal ALP, the WA state ALP was able retain its hold on the marginal mortgage belt seats with their aspirational suburban votes. For how long? Given that working class culture is fundamentally aspirational and so foreign to the levelling impulse of bourgeois liberal culture.

It's marked isn't it: failure at federal level, success at state level. Are Australian citizens voting strategically?

Let us hope that the Gallop Government stays with the desalinisation option and is not tempted to build the Kimberley/Perth canal because of the allure of big development, the Ernie Bridge tradition, and a water cargo cult mentality. Maybe, just maybe, it's mode of governance will edge closer towards shifting to a sustainable economy, as well as helping to build a knowledge nation.

A shattered Federal Labor takes the Gallop Government's victory as a morale boost. Let us also hope that, with the ALP continuing to control all the states, the federal ALP now begins to defend federalism and the regions. These need to become a form of countervailing power to resist the strategy of the conservative centralists to concentrate ever more power in Canberra. A big battle is looming.

So what of the ALP strategies over the next six years to ten years? Do they fully realize what is going to happen under Howard? Have they moved beyond their concentration on the survival tactics of the short-term? Are they addressing Australia's long-term problems?

The Howard Government will use its power in the Senate to fundamentally alter the government's responsibility to its citizens, as it realigns the nation in favor of the stock-market-invested rich and against the interests of the poor. We are talking about an enormous change here, and it will be well nigh impossible for ALP to put the welfare state back the way it was. An example. This is such a huge change that it will be permanent; the ALP cannot put it back once it's done.

So how will this roll back of the welfare state be sold? Consider this simple image that tries to capture the complexities of building democracy in Iraq.

Consider the conservative response. Those who think like this--the anti-war crowd--support terrorists, are anti-American, are against family values, are Bush haters pure and simple and want the US to fail in Iraq.

See Miranda Devine's column in the Sydney Morning Herald for some of this. Commentary on this column can be found over at Road to Surfdom.

The next move is to say that the ALP is soft on national security and traditional values since it panders to the elitist inner city latte liberals who despise ordinary Australians living in the suburbs.

All very familar.

Now that has been the story being told to the conservative working class.It is a strategic move that places culture above class and economics as a way of dealing with the effects of downsizing, outsourcing, casualisation, and layoffs on lower-income workers during an economic boom.

For the ALP it is not just a simple case of getting the economic story right to gain economic credibility and respectability. It is also a matter of tackling the way the culture is used to further the conservative economc agenda and the roll back of the welfare state. The conservative strategy is to mobilize cultural anger to achieve free market economic ends.

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February 24, 2005

pork barrel as a political attack weapon

I'm reading an old Bulletin---last weeks, which I found lying around. It seems to be so very thin in the way of content, with little to say that is of much public interest. It appears to be on its last legs. It's circulation is dropping. And there is now some nostalgia being expressed for The Bulletin's better days.

Is there any space for weekly print magazines these days with the burgeoning virtual media?

The Laurie Oaks' 'Power Play' columns in The Bulletin are worth reading. His regional rorts running up to the federal election in this old issue are interesting. He says:

Like Sports Rorts, Regional Partnerships helps government MPs to defend marginal seats. But it is also designed as an attack weapon to dislodge opposition MPs.

Oaks says the Sports Rorts under the Keating Government were essentially defensive in political intent. The primary aim was to help Labor hold on to its marginals in the 1993 poll. Labor MPs could shore up support by securing grants for projects, usually sports-related, in their electorates.

How did the Howard Government's Regional Partnerships achieve their attack objectives? Oaks spells it out:

Before last year’s election, when grants went to seats held by Labor or independents, the sitting members were left out in the cold. Announcements were made by “patron” Liberal or National Party senators assigned to those seats, with Coalition candidates involved as prominently as possible. It was a means of boosting the profile of Liberal and National Party candidates. “A Coalition candidate could be made to look like a more effective local member,” claims a Labor frontbencher.

Sounds about right to me.

Such are the ways that Australian Governments try to entrench themselves in power. A lot of the politics we see being played out are about retaining the hand on the levers of power.

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February 17, 2005

work and politics

This is a good article by Barbara Pococke in The Australian about the changing patterns of work and its implications for party electoral politics. The points Pocock makes are that participation is paid work is increasing, the sex of the worker has changeing as Australian women join men in work, and the new jobs are in the retail, property and business services, health, education and community sectors.

What then are the implications for the ALP? Pocock says:

The ALP is watching the wrong bellwether if it thinks blue-collar workers hold the key to electoral recovery. This worker is increasingly rare in the labour market. Re-wedding him to the ALP is fiddling while Rome burns -- and the ballot box swells with the votes of women, service sector, casual, part time and professional workers, who live in every electorate.

And the implications for the Coalition?

...the union bogy and strikes are lost in history, while the daily struggle to work reasonable hours for a fair wage that covers debt and allows a decent household life is front and centre. The remade worker is no longer an assured vote and a standard sort of guy - instead he is diverse and politically unattached, but someone to whom work continues to matter a great deal.

Pocock should say 'she' as well 'he' since male participation in paid work has fallen steeply whilst the particpation of women has risen steeply.

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February 11, 2005

beware the reborn centralists

Huge reform expectations are now building up around the Coalition's control of the Senate after June 30th. With no effective opposition in the Senate for the next decade, the diverse political tensions and oppositions will now shift elsewhere.

There are many faultines within the Howard Government. The succession is definitely one of them:

Will there be an orderly transition on time (next year)? I doubt it. Howard looks as if he is digging in for another election

Unlike Keating, Costello has not made a big mark on public policy since 1996. What has Peter Costello done by way of fundamental reform of the economy? Hasn't his 8 year reign as Treasurer been mostly about the administration of the deregulated economy established by Hawke and Keating? Is that a plausible account of the last nine years?

Is the Treasurer, and PM aspirant, hopeful and heir apparent, now going to start making his mark now? Peter Costello hasn't really distinguished himself from John Howard and stated what he actually stands for. Perhaps he's now going to step out of the shadow and find his voice? Will we now hear much more talk of supply-side tax cuts growing tax revenues and the economy?

Industrial relations is seen as a component to an "enterprise culture". Business is putting lots of pressure on the Howard Government to seize the historic opportunity of Senate control and go for broke in radically reforming the labour market.

Is the need to find his own voice the reason why Peter Costello is returning to his New Right roots and publicly campaigning for radical industrial relations reforms, and using the constitutional head of power (corporations power) to override the states and form a national industrial relations system?

Costello is going to use his hands on the levers of power to treat the states as constitutional pariahs. He is acting like a wolf to shake the independent life out of the states. Why would you trust the commonwealth on this?

Will the states voluntarily give over their power to Canberra, or will the Commonwealth impose its will by using the corporations power?

Why should the states kowtow to Costello's latest centralist enthusiasm? Why should the states contribute to their own culling and allow themselves to become clients of the feds? Would that not be the end of the federalism of the constitutional founders and framers.

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February 3, 2005

the wind is blowing one way

Which policy direction is the ALP going to take, now that it has given the Coalition control of the Senate, and decided that it must engage in hand-to-hand trench warfare in the House of Representatives?How will it endeavour to re-establish its foregone economic credibility?

Now we know the direction the policy wind is blowing. It is a neo-liberal pro-market, involving significant changes in industrial relations and welfare. It's a Treasury wind fanned by the OECD. The OECD pretty much runs the Treasury line says John Quiggin. I notice there is no mention of the current account deficit. Presumably Treasury is covering that up.

This provides an opportunity for the ALP to establish some economic street cred. Remember the ALP said it lost the last election mainly because it had little credibility on economic issues. People were up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt and they did not trust Labor to manage the economy. The public preferred the Coalition.

So, does the ALP use the opportunity provided by the OECD Report go in hard? Does it float in the wind? How would the ALP govern the economy? What is its course of its policy action? What are the faultlines between the ALP and the Coalition, now that the ALP has rejected playing the small target game?

Ross Fitzgerald's op ed piece in The Australian has a suggestion. He starts by saying that "...the ALP now begins the difficult internal debate about the economic and social policy settings it needs to reclaim government." He then links this to the backbench call tax reform to the top tax rates:

Radical industrial changes and hard-hearted welfare reforms could ... have a significant negative effect by changing lives and eating away at the nation's sense of the fair go. Tax reform of the kind proposed by the federal Government's newest ginger group would reduce the amount of money available for social services such as schools and hospitals. This agenda, which is almost certainly being orchestrated by the Treasurer, represents a fundamental leap to a US-style society.

Should federal Labor drift along with this. Should it dig in and fight? If so where? What is the ground it is going to fight on? What does the ALP tell us about these questions?

It is hard to tell. So far there has been no response by the ALP's economic glimmer twins (Swan and Smith) to the OCED's advice to the Howard Government, that the Australian economy needs a reinvigorated reform program to prevent it sliding back to lower growth and lower living standards. The ALP is slow off the mark, suprisingly so when Costello says that the OECD report endorses the Government's economic management and legislative agenda.

Well he would, woudn't he. The OECD document supports the Treasury line. So what is the reform agenda?

The editorial in the Australian Financial Review describes a rough reform agenda that is already in place:

It includes workplace, tax and welfare reform to entice more people into the workforce; deregulating captive public health and school services; and completing the deregulation of vital energy, water and transport infrastructure to attract investment.

So where is the ALP? Is it not meant to be going in hard over the next six months?

When are the glimmer twins going to take the fight to Costello? Do they have what it takes to do so?

Update Feb 4th
The ALP's response eventually came. It says that economic reform under the Howard Government has stalled and this jeapordises Australia's future economic growth. Wayne Swan says:

In a damming indictment of the Government's economic credentials the OECD says that economic reform has slackened off and needs to be reinvigorated. The slacking off has occurred across the board, with all the drivers of economic growth being neglected, including labour market participation, productivity, tax and education.

So what economic reform does the ALP favour, given the free market account of the reform agenda outlined in the AFR?

Wayne Swan mentions marginal tax rates, top marginal tax rates and labour market reform including skills shortages.Is this not the Government's agenda?

There is nothing about the trade deficit either. Is not that silence the Treasury's agenda?

When then is the ALP's economic reform agenda? I reckon it is playing small target by default.

One possibility is tax reform to ease the high marginal tax rates for those people moving from welfare to work? That is necessary and good policy but it is a very expensive bit of reform. Is the ALP serious about this? Or is it shadow boxing? My judgement is that Swan and Smith are faking it.

Ross Gittens agrees. he says that Swan and Smith are political operators who are unlikely to establish the ALP's economic credibility vis-a-vis Costello in the quality press.

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January 19, 2005

ALP: executions & stasis

It has always suprised me how an undemocratic ALP lost its way after 1996. How come?

The media accounts of this usually focus on the leader's flawed character of the leader. This involves an intrusion into the politicians private life, herd mentality, the use of comment, rumor and leak and the creation of a media spectacle based on the blood and gore of sacrifice. It is not pretty to watch.

The media cut Latham down as much as the toecutters in the ALP party machine. Well, they danced that tango together, whilst celebrating their street cred. and parading their political nous. Both groups hungered for, and demanded, the appropriate sacrifice with its symbols of sovereignty, blood, sword and executioner.

John Quiggin has some remarks in the role of the media in the fall of Mark Latham. He alludes to, rather than explores, the dark, demonic and mythical aspects of the public execution.

Two examples of what I mean by the ALP losing its way after 1996 can be found on the next page.

Public policy issues. The ALP was, and is, committed to a globalised market economy with a reformed welfare system. But what did that mean apart from ladders of opportuntiy, easing the squeeze, Medicare Gold etc.? You don't much idea from the Chifley Research Centre. It is not producing work like Demos did for the Blair Government in the UK.

The current account deficit is a big problem, due to the collapse in export growth.The Howard Government has pulled down the policy structure by which the ALP promoted manufactured experts when it was in government. Where is the federal ALP on this today? Where is the federal ALP on the need to develop a knowledge economy? Where are the big ideas as opposed to the spin of the media release and the media driven rhetoric?

Secondly, the clever political strategic thinking by the hard heads of the party failed to identify a classic Howard wedge: using Family First as a political halfway house for conservative blue collar Christian voters to leave the ALP. These voters give their primary vote to the Family First, and then allocate their preferences to the Liberals. Instead of countering this the hard heads supported Family First and gave the Liberals control of the Senate.

Real clever huh? But then the ALP always though the political battle tok place in the House and the Seante was irrelevant.

The significance of these two examples?

With control of both houses of federal Parliament the Howard Government can now set its enterprise culture policy agenda for the next 4-8 years, box a defensive ALP into the corner and keep it there. Easing the squeeze now takes on a whole new set of meanings. It means a struggle to develop credible policies on economics, health education, environment and energy and infrastructure renewal.

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January 18, 2005

the circus continues

It cannot get much worse, can it?

Apparently so. They have been busy fighting themselves they've forgotten that they are expected to fight the Howard Government. Isn't that what oppositions do in a liberal democracy?

The corporate media have stirred the story along, filling the Xmas vacuum created by Latham, with their kind of political pressure about leadership. However, the media is not self-reflective about its role.

The situation is at breaking point now. Something has to give. Everyone says so.

And I'm in sensory overload from all the chatter, and tired from keeping up with who said what to whom about drowning not waving.

It is said that the sacrifice has to be made. The new must make way for the old. In the interests of the party, of course. And the nation?

Oh no, not Kim again.

Give the leadership to the women I say. The men cannot sort the mess they created. But they lack the courage to get behind Julia Gillard.

What are others saying?

Michelle Grattin's mind is made up. And the rest of the Canberra Press Gallery and mainstream journalism? Have they kissed Mark Latham goodbye too after they built him up?

The fallout from going backwards in the last federal election is continuing to create havoc inside the ALP. The internal bitterness is very deep and widespread. The hole they are busily digging for themselves just gets deeper. They are in a self-destruct mode.

Will Kim Beazley--the unity and stability candidate for the ALP leadership-- be able to stop the party's self-destruction?

Update
Mark Latham has kissed it all goodbye. He announced he will resign as federal Opposition Leader and quit politics due to ill-health.He needs to look after his health and live a normal life with his family.

Sensible.
Update: comments
Andrew Bartlett has a good post on this.

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January 14, 2005

the return of the self same

The ALP party machine cannot help themselves can they? Even when their leader is sick they put in the stick. Especially when their leader is sick.

Here they are, once again, tearing themselves to bits in public for all to see. All sorts of resentments, discontents and hatreds are now in play in public for all to see. The factions appear to be out of control.They are feeding the media to create the image of crisis and Latham being political dead meat. The factional machine doesn't seem to care about the effect this self-destructive spectacle has on Australian citizens. All they desire is to put the boot in, even though everyone desperately yearns for unity. They want blood.

This is a political illness.A fallout from a traumatic electoral loss. And it is the party that has created the downward political trajectory that Latham now faces.

Leahy

Latham appears to be the scapegoat for the discontent and resentment about the state of the ALP. It looks to be deepest amongst the Queensland and NSW right who desire a cross dressed conservative party. New leaders are being drafted.The numbers are being countered. Phones are ringing. Options canvassed. Caucus votes secured.

It is surreal and excessive.

Latham issues a statement saying that he is ill, needs a rest, wants to have a holiday with his family over Xmas and will be back at work at the end of January. He's off the job until Australia Day. Doctor's orders.

The party response? Radical surgery is required. Off with Latham's head. Redemption wil only come from killing off Latham's leadership of the party. It is now just a question of when and how he is to be replaced, and who will replace him. By all accounts this is the only kind of politics fo reconcilation that the party machine understands.

The rationales for the necessary sacrifice are flimsy, nonsensical and self-serving. Latham is damaging the party it is said.

Huh? Is it not the factional-driven spectacle doing the damage? Do the factions think that a disappearing/sick Mark Latham is its only problem? Is there not a small problem of the process of renewal of the party? Is it not the divided party factions creating the Latham vs the party scenario? Was it not the party machine that handed over control of the Senate to the Howard Government?

The ALP is handling the post-election period very badly. As hatred continues to seep out from body of the machine, the party has become a collection of antagonistic, self-moving mechanical parts (factions) that grind against, and then repel, each other.

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January 9, 2005

being ground down

Whilst John Howard has been playing the statesman in his exercise of knowledge and political power in Indonesia, the ALP has been living in the shadows contemplating the eightfold path to economic enlightenment.

Such contrasts in the art of politics based on sound judgement and practical shaping can fill even the true believers with nagging doubt:

The federal ALP seems to have disappeared on the tsunami issue. They are not even raisng issues about emergency relief versus development or the effect of the civil war in Aceh on the provision of emergency relief.They've gone missing in action says Crikey.

Little seems to be going the ALP's way.

WA and NSW elections? It would appear that WA will probably be the first to fall. Do we have a domino effect?

David Burchill has written an op-ed in the Australian Financial Review (Jan 8-9,2005,p.62) on things not going well for the ALP. No, it is not about factional dinosaurs and warlords and their masculinist culture and big dick practices. Burchill explores the ALP's relationship to the moral traditionalists and economic aspirationals in the outer suburbs.

Burchill says that, though Latham was the ALP's aspirational leader, his explicit appeal to the outer suburban voters failed. Burchill then says:

If Latham was Labor's "aspirational leader", then what went wrong? Why did outer Sydney and Melbourne show their backs to the lad from Green Valley? With the benefit of hindsight, part of the answer now seems obvious.It was the economy, stupid.

Burchill goes to say that Latham neglected the economy because he felt that Labor had little new to say.It had done the hard yards in 1983-96 and the rest was pure gravy. Burchill then adds:

And so he focused on personal matters--but purely in the social sphere, without recognizing the personal impact of economics on people's lives. Yet for folk in the outer suburbs economics is personal.It is the linchpin of their endeavour to "get things in order"--to put their lives in good order and get their families on the up and up.

So the ALP tried to appeal to the outer suburban apirationals in terms of the welfare of their families and localities without talking about the economic conditions that made this getting it together possible.

Burchill sums up well.It is less a case of Labor putting the social cart before the economic horse, and more a case of Labor forgetting to hitch the cart and horse together.

He ends on a depressing note:

Latham gave the aspirationals his best shot, but failed. Nobody left in Labor's decimated ranks is nearly so well qualified to pull it off....If Latham's moment has indeed passed, then get get ready for the long haul.

Maybe.

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December 18, 2004

political portraits

I don't really care all that much about ranking the Australia's Prime Ministers as to who was the greatest.

That view presupposes the great man view of history, which I reject in favour of great historical forces sweeping us vulnerable and fragile human beings along. It is the mass of humanity within economic and political relationships that drives history.

Those historical forces trash our sacred laws, tear at our bodies, leave us damaged, wounded,and scurrying for safety. If you look back on where we came during the 20th century we see wreckage upon wreckage piling up, and discern the "grief" and "helpless sadness the tragedies and monstrous sacrifices have caused.

History may well be a slaughterbench upon which the bodies an virtues of innocents have been sacrificed. But history is more than a "slaughter-bench," more a series of senseless tragedies, since the the basic structure of reality itself is rational. You can discern rationality at work in the struggle for freedom.

Oh well, that's enough Hegel for the weekend.

The composite image of our Prime Ministers as noble characters and historical beings appeals to me for some reason. Maybe it is because we can begin to understand that these individuals were limited by the constraints and forces in a particular period of Australia's national development.

Where are portraits of our Prime Ministers from the 1st half of the 20th century? Does our historical political consciousness only go back to 1940? Does our historical understanding acknowledge that none of these individuals overstepped their time---the world in which they found ourselves in?

The lives of these noble characters are suspended somewhere between the beasts and gods. Their good character, concern and care for others as they bult a state and nation was corrupted by historical adversity. They then used language as a persuasive force inside the game of power and revenge.

You can read the history they were a part of as the destruction of convention and the betrayal of trust. You can smell the blood, feel the lust for revenge, discern the hint of cannabalistic desires (politically speaking) and hear the screams as these friends tear the flesh of their opponents to bloody shreds.

This is history as tragedy. We are characters in the political machinery of that tragedy.

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December 17, 2004

a telling quote

All the signs are that the Australian economy is set to enter next year with low growth rates, a growing trade deficit, a dying housing boom and high household debt. That downturn was starting to happen during the federal election but the ALP did not notice. It did not connect the big election spend to a slowing economyand point out the dangers.

In this context this is telling quote from Ross Gittens, which I found on the Crikey website. It is from a paper Gittens gave to the Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference. Gittens says:

"But, as Lindsay Tanner has pointed out, Labor's lack of credibility on the economy runs far deeper than just the crazy tactics it adopted in this campaign. Economists look back on Labor's time in government with not a little respect, but the Howard Government has worked assiduously for the past eight years to trash Labor's reputation as an economic manager, with Labor doing little to try to counter that assault. Why? Because, as Tanner says, since Paul Keating's defeat in 1996 his successors have been ambivalent towards Labor's record on economic reform. Labor's wanted to be seen as opposed to economic reform, not as the primary instigator of it. Little wonder it's lost whatever economic credibility it once had."

Very apt, even if Gittens is recycling the argument of Lindsay Tanner. Tanner has cause for concern. Why has there not been money spent on modernizing Australia's aging and dilapidated infrastructure (such as the rail network, electricity, telecommunications)? Where was the money to addres the skills shortages?

One needs to ask why the ALP's ambivalence to the reforms it initiated under Keating, given Latham's neo-liberal reform creditionals. What is preventing the ALP from developing a new economic narrative that includes Australian's experience of the profound change from the effect of globalisation and the information revolution on our daily lives. As Tanner says:

"We need to find new ways to maintain prosperity, social equity and economic justice in this radically different world in which we find ourselves. We also need to reconnect communities and tackle the growing problems of social dislocation in today's world."

Why cannot the ALP connect that insight to the need for Australians to lift their exports, without pulling the resources rabbit out of the hat.

Update
I see that Julia Gillard has made a speech in Melbourne saying that the ALP needed a new economic reform agenda. From reading Mark Davis' report in the Australian Financial Review it would appear that reform agenda would consist in using market forces to deliver more effective public services and a better environment.

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December 8, 2004

passive observers

I observed the political theatre of Question Time in the House of Representatives this afternoon. Most of the questions from the ALP were directed at De Anne Kelly, the Veterans Affairs Minister.

The Gillard strategy aimed to ensnare De Anne Kelly in contradictions and to show up the Coalition bias of an inexperienced Speaker.

The tactics delivered the result wanted.

Labor is clearly engaged in a drawn-out battle against a struggling, defensive Speaker in the House of Representatives.

And yet....

The little bloc of the ALP in the House looked a rabble. They came across as disunited, frustrated and humilated. Most were bodies on seats doing their own thing. They have collapsed from the defeat.

This was such a contrast to the large, disciplined Coalition bloc whose central strategy was to use Abbott and Costello to humiliate and mock a very wounded ALP. John Howard smiled whilst his two senior ministers played their game of rubbing salt into the wounds.

It was a very raw and naked display of political power.

As Costello mocked, the ALP faces a long march to economic and political creditability.That is the problem the ALP currently faces with the media and the electorate.

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December 6, 2004

pork-barrelling

There is no need to add anything much about the money bucket called the Regional Partnerships program. It is just the latest example in a long bipartisan tradition of porkbarrelling for electoral purposes with little transparency of process.

Pryor

What few words that can be said is that the National Party, as an agrarian political party, is in terminal decline. They failed to represent its traditional heartland properly. So they try to cheat political death.

They've also being doing a bit of rebranding as they are now The Nationals. Does that mean they recognize that their agrarian mythology is looking very tattered.

Oh, and I would like to add that the Senate would not have looked into the pork barrelling engaged in by the Nationals after June 30 2005. It will be a new era.

Update: Dec.8
The regional pork rorts finger is being pointed at De Anne Kelly, the Veterans Affairs Minister. She is now defending herself against evidence that she splashed out large amounts of government funds, without proper process, for electoral advantage.

She will be protected by Howard as she faces growing public pressure to quit.

Update: Dec. 9th
The Prime Minister admitted that De-Anne Kelly had breached the rules of ministerial conduct in her employment of a staff member with a potential conflict of interest. She failed to lodge the required form giving details of the staff member's financial interests, including potential conflicts of interest. Since the mistake was minor there was no need for her to be sacked.

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November 29, 2004

Janine Haines: in memoriam

Federal Parliament paid its respects and tributes to Janine Haines, the former Democrat leader, who died last week.

I'm currently reading her book Sufferage to Sufferance: 100 years of women in politics. In it she remarks that she once commented to a forum in 1990 that:

"...it has been my misfortunate lot over the last 25 years of my life to belong three of the most reviled, underrated and overworked professions in the world. In that time I had been, occassionally simultaneously, a mother, a teacher and a politician. If one of me wasn't being blamed for the problems of the world one of the others was."

She said that the response that greeted these throwaway lines indicated that she wasn't the only one in the room who occassionally felt put upon.

Haine's book is written within the enlightened liberal feminist tradition, and is primarily concerned with the discrimination, prejudice and hurdles women had to confront and fight to make their career in politics. It is concerned to vindicate the rights of woman.It's criticism is that Western society does not guarantee to women all the rights that it considers appropriate to the status of being human. So the argument is that the liberal principles of equality, freedom and equality of opportunity must be fully extended to women.

Hence Haine's encouragement and support for such measures as anti-discrimination and equal pay legislation in the hope that they will help to end the discrimination against women.

From I understand from listening to the various parliamentary tributes in the Senate Janine Haines was a social liberal, which is to be distinguished from the laissez-faire liberalism that re-emerged since the 1970s and 1980s as �market liberalism� or �neo-liberalism� or �economic rationalism�. Social liberalism works with the idea of the ethical state committed to the common good and equal opportunity. This is sthe tradtion of the 'fair go', which gave rise to the distinctively Australian institution of wage arbitration, and to other aspects of the welfare state such as public education and health, parks, unemployment benefits and pensions.

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November 26, 2004

ALP: bloodletting

The bloodletting in the ALP sure is going on for a long time. Too long.

The media flows are saying that everybody wants a piece of everyone: the feds want some blood from the state, the states are only willing to bite some flesh not give blood; the right wants to blow things up; Latham's friends are miffed by the positions being given to his enemies; those with positions and influence in the party are annoyed with the leader's autocratic style, caucus is divided etc etc.

A light moment:

Leunig

For the intertextuality of the Leunig image, see this image.

No-one, it seems, is willing to cut anyone any slack in the ALP these days. Forgiveness is out. Payback is in. They're even back to talking about leadership changes, disunity being death and dead parrots. What is not being talked about is caring for disadvantaged Australians. Equality has long been forgotten.

Meanwhile the wine will continue to flow freely amidst the jubilant laughter of staffers of the Liberals and Nationals, who will be dining on the pavement tables in Manuka and Kingston next week. At some point they will need to remind themselves about heeding John Howard�s warnings about the dangers of hubris and triumphalism.

Labor's electoral loss was not really an issue of leadership. Mark Latham as leader is not responsible for the failures of the past three elections. Would it not be more fruitful for the ALP to have a debate about the relevance of the Third Way adopted by the ALP? There should be such a debate given that the ALP had largely opted out of the economic debate in favour of social policy.

There is one happening. The debate has moved on from the 1990s concerns of civil society versus a statist bureaucracy to the one about values and the suburbs. As Christopher Scanlon argues:

"Latham is essentially following the [Third Way] script in courting the "army of contractors, consultants, franchisees and entrepreneurs. He is attempting to appeal to groupings who traditionally vote conservative and have regarded the labour movement with suspicion, which has been returned in kind. That's thoroughly consistent with the third way."

The ALP lost the last federal election in the suburbs, and it will not be able to return to government without winning back the lost suburban voters.

The ALP did try this to do this. Remember its talk about the aspirational new middle class in the outer metropolitan seats? It had forgetten about the suburban PAYE section of the middle class who once formed Labor's base? The danger with this strategy, as Scanlon points out, is that the ALP may alienate its traditional supporter base, while becoming indistinguishable from the conservatives. The electorate is left with a choice between a pale imitation of the right, or the Real McCoy.

In the last election Australia voters opted for the Real McCoy observes Scanlon. Scanlon says that it is time for something new. "As a strategy for winning government, the third way in Australia is a dead dog."

Is it? What is the something new? That is what the ALP should be discussing instead of tearing itself to bits.

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November 19, 2004

ALP: torn 'n frayed

From what I saw in Federal Parliament this week the ALP is in a bad way.

It is in a political cage, is badly wounded, and hurting badly. Its body is sundered and bleeding, whilst its spirit is one of depression and despair. The ALP is facing a future of 3-6 years of triumphant, arrogant Coalition members taunting it, and jabbing its wounded body with sharp sticks through the political cage. At the moment a humiliated ALP does not have the energy or will to howl with rage and rattle its cage with fury.

It was worse, far worse, than I'd expected.

During the week the ALP went through the motions of political theatre, but the performance was tired and cliched. It left me wondering whether the ALP knew any other tricks than the old one of political personal attack. Or whether it realized that that it needed some new tactics other than living off the political oxygen generated by the political bribery allegations made by Tony Windsor.

(More on the scandal at Palmer's Oz Politics, Completely Biased and Margo's Webdiary. I expect the Howard Government to tough this out without suffering any great damage. Greg Maguire is the weak link).

It was more difficult for me to go behind the smiling mask presented by the ALP in the theatre of Parliament to see the disunity, conflict and frustration within the ALP's body politic about the way the ALP had conducted itself in the election. Nor was I able to see into the inner sanctum of the ALP to discern the public mood in the leadership group. What I did see was the body language of those from the inner sanctum when they were in public on Tuesday. Their body language was one of being wounded, in shock and in pain. The wound was still raw and bleeding.

The press (eg., Pamela Williams in todays Australian Financial Review) are reporting on the recriminations circulating about the nature and style of Latham's leadership and character, the disagreements within the campaign team, and the incompetence of the party machine etc etc. The crew on board the ALP are not happy.

My judgement is that the implications of the election defeat have yet to fully sink in. The soul searching has yet to begin. Many are still in denial.

The key political point is that it is a long way back to the Treasury benches for the ALP. Howard and his arrogant crew will repel any attack on their citadel with ruthless determination.

Update
John Quiggin is more optimistic. He suggests that it would not take much to shift things: a couple of percentage points increase in interest rates would cause a 3% percentage shift to the ALP. Maybe. Remember the Government's majority in the Senate is for 6 years. That means the ALP and the minor parties (Greens & Democrats) will be sidelined and public debate marginalized.

What is required in the long run (3-6 years) is a new political narrative and some good environmental and social policy. The social policy needs to be based on the fair and equitable distribution of both goods and services, wealth and income, and to take into account the current resources, opportunities and needs of citizens.

My guess is that today's policy review in Canberra will see the ALP gut both Medicare Gold and the Tasmanian Forests policy. They have.

One positive is this Latham speech.

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November 13, 2004

political blues

Federal parliament sits next week, the first of three weeks of parliamentary sittings before the Xmas. These November sittings are the first sittings since the convincing Coalition victory at the Federal election. I expect the ALP's bloodied nose to be rubbed raw, with legislation (eg., unfair dismissal, workplace relations and terrorism) being introduced to deepen its misery and despair. The ALP is going to have a rough trot.

The economy is chugging along, unemployment is dropping, inflation is under control, and higher interest rates are still around the corner. Nothing much flowing for the ALP on that front in the short term.

The Howard government is going to introduce supply side measures to loosen up the economy--eg., small businesss exemption from unfair-dismissal laws and establish individual contracts as the primary means for regulating employment --and then take great pleasure in watching the ALP squirm, as it is caught between its desire to be economic responsible and looking after the interests of workers.

One presumes that in Parliament's three pre-Christmas sitting weeks, the Government will busy itself implementing election commitments and tidying up some the legislation left over from before the election. The political theatre will be all about making its political play against Labor.

After June 2005 it will be a whole new ball game. Pressure will be placed on Howard by big business to be far more radical in its industrial realtions reforms.

Update 15 Nov.
In the meantime we are revisiting the abortion debate. It has been running for three weeks, stirred along by Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne, Alan Cadman and Eric Abetz. They have been calling for late term abortions to be banned and a review of Medicare funding of the procedure. Is this just a foot in the door for a wider move against abortion by the moral conservatives? I presume private conversations are going on in the Liberal Party. Why haven't the liberal women told the conservative men to cool it?

An answer

Update 16 Nov

A particular example of a Canberra move:

Pyror

It's good huh?

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October 29, 2004

Reality dawns

It has taken a while to sink in amongst the corporate media, but it finally has:

Moir

Did Australians vote strategically in the Senate to give the Coalition control? Was it just a mistake? Would citizens have voted differently if they believed the Coalition would achieve a majority in the Senate? One answer.

The new Senate will not just pass all the government legislation that has banked up over the last six years. We can also expect the roll back of the modifications to the government's legisation the Coalition did not like by the minor parties; or the roll back of the bits that the Coaltion had to back down on to get its legislation through. Remember the industrial relations legislation attached to the universities legislation last November?

Guess what? It'll be back. Sooner rather than latter. And lots of new stuff about university governance--the states handing over their powers over universities to Canberra--- and industry-driven vocational training that bypasses the states. Are we going to see a fully market-based tertiary sector?

What will suffer is the environment. There is little hope for any movement towards renewable energy manufacturing in Australia. The National Party has increased its power over environmental reforms. Will they work to roll back the environmental reforms of the past six years?

The new ALP Treasurer Wayne Swan says that Labor's top priority was keeping the economy strong, creating economic wealth, and pushing for a second round of productivity reforms. Nothing at all about a sustainable economy. Since Swan is known for a "relentless-staying-on-message" political communication the ALP has well and truely retreated from its earlier sustainable development approach. This is about politics not policy that is good for the nation.

So what will the ALP do in the Senate for the next 3 years? What will its strategy be? Go to ground? Put up token resistance?

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October 28, 2004

a quote

From an editorial in the New Left Review by Alexander Cockburn. Cockburn is commenting on the US Presidential elections:

"As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the cia and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, IMF, WTO; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day�namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda."

Does not a similar (Lib-Lab) consensus apply in Australia? So similar that we can talk about a neo-liberal governmentality?

Is not the theatrical conflict between the two main parties who vituperate against each other in great style in Australia mostly done for show, for the purposes of assuaging their respective blocs of voters? It is a spectacle.

The ALP crowd may weep their tears of despair, but a Latham ALP would have adopted many of the LNP positions. They would sell poor single mothers, working people, regions, Telstra and protections against the negatives of free trade down the river whilst doing little to save the ecology of the rivers.

It is not the leader. The ALP have done this convergence number over the past two or three years. In the senate they huff and puff for the cameras, then quietly pass the government's legislation when the cameras are turned off. It is standard operating procedure.

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October 22, 2004

ALP: a slow decay?

An Allan Moir cartoon from earlier in the week:

There is no soul. The ALP has becoming a factionally-driven machine preoccupied with clever tactics for fighting elections, and less and less a political movement that expresses the desires of Australians for a better kind of life.

Barry Jones in The Age makes some good points. The first is about tactics verus strategy:

"The ALP has a thousand tacticians - and no strategists. Giving ALP Senate preferences to Family First in Victoria and Tasmania is a classic example of a tactical decision that would have probably looked clever if it helped Labor win seats at no cost to itself. But clearly this decision was never considered strategically - when Labor's vote collapses, would the party really prefer a Family First senator to a Greens senator?"

Rightly said.

Why is this important? Jones makes another point:

"The ALP is not, and should not be, simply a machine that organises election campaigns every few years - it needs to provide spiritual, ethical and intellectual nourishment to the Australian people, and promote a creative, generous nation. Labor must promote an inclusive agenda, not an excluding one.
At present, there is a significant disenfranchisement of Labor's traditional vote, people who feel lonely and alienated from the party they have always voted for. If Labor does not bring them home, the party's heart and mind will die."

Well said.

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October 17, 2004

fissures factions families

I guess the election defeat is a bit of shock for the ALP. So we can expect exhaustion, depression, explosive recriminations, factional brawls and strange happenings amidst the train wreck.

The election was pretty much decided in the outer suburban seats of the capital cities. The outer suburban middle classes in the mortgage belt rejected the ALP, despite Latham's talk about aspirational votes, easing the squeeze and providing ladders of opportunity. Remember all those Green Valley homilies about me and mum?

Leak

It is not about Latham and Beazley and the leadership tussle. Maybe it is about the role of the backbench?

From where I sit on the outside looking in, the key problem is the factions run by the factional headkickers who control their group in such a way that the the energy and ideas is drained from the party. The ALP is a political machine without a heart.

For it is within, and between, the factions where we find the disciplined partisan politics bile, hate and recrimination. True, the wheeling and dealing of the factions are a way that an undemocratic ALP deals with the deepening fissure between its traditional working class base and its social liberal, professional middle class one. Yet the effect of factional politics is a choking of renewal within the ALP. Selecting party hacks is just one example. It leads to demoralisation amongst party members.

The consequence of the ALP defeat and its preference deals with Family First is that we are confronted by the family values movement, one in which mercy is hoarded within families, leaving outsiders to damnation and torment. Family values mean that people are loyal to their own kin and pursue familial interests with little concern for the larger civil society. As it is families that matter, not civil society, so fallen angels become malignant devils.

This social conservatism turns our heads to looking backward, toward a better, nostalgic past beyond the radicalism of the 1960s. It asks us to sleepwalk through history, whilst it places iron constraints on the freedoms won in the struggles of the 1960s.

What is suprising is how deep this socially conservative family values movement is within the ALP. When you listen to the ALP right you hear stories about one conservative cause after another. They are often singing from the same song sheet as the social conservatives in the LNP. Strange isn't it, the way the election tacticians have handed control of the Senate to the conservatives.

October 19th
The rise to the front bench of Joe Ludwig - the favoured son of veteran Queensland political thug, Bill Ludwig - exemplifies the negative effects of (Queensland) factionalism in the federal ALP. It indicates both the lovely mix of nepotism, union favouritism and bullying that is often driven by revenge and resentment and the way that where endorsement to the Senate is now generally a reward for factional fidelity.

Let us hope that the talented young women are given positions of power to highlight the progressive face of the ALP. That may counterbalance a divided caucus entrapped up in pessimism.

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October 10, 2004

singing the blues

The Sunday television talk shows were full of excuses now flowing freely from the ALP. It was the interest rate fear campaign that did it some said. It was a new leader (L-plate) ten months out from an election, others said. John Howard was so dishonest and outrageous in running his scare campaign on a lie. It was saving the forests and being too close to the greens. Or it was the late release of policy.

And so on and so on.

Pryor

It was a trainwreck. Pryor is right. The ALP's primary vote of 38.2 per cent would have to be one of the lowest votes ever. (The second lowest since preferential votin was introduced, in 1919, says Louise Dodson in the SMH, quoting the Parliamentary Library). Labor cannot win from a primary vote of just 38.3 per cent. With no Liberal marginal seats left in Victoria and a number of ALP ones, Labor is probably facing two terms in opposition.

The problem with the above excuses is that they deny the responsibility of the senior leadership group who were in charge of the campaign strategy and tactics. Shouldn't the finger be pointed at them?

For instance. Why did the ALP not vigorously contest the interest rate campaign run by the LNP from the beginning rather than give it away? Why did it not claim credit for Australia's economic prosperity by appealing to the Hawke/Keating economic reforms? Reading to school children captures headlines but it does not adddress the fear about debt-laden families losing everything from rising interest rates. That is a very real threat considering that most people are living on the financial edge with high mortgages.

Another example. The scare campaign over Peter Costello's leadership aspirations was a feeble joke. It says behind Howard stands Costello who is the economic manager who delivered the economic good times. The ALP reinforces Howard's message. Bizarre.

The flow of excuses all assume that elections are won or lost during election campaigns. The commentators reinforce this when they analyse every nuance in the campaign in an attempt to make sense of the result. Shouldn't we looking beyond the spectacle and theatre of the campaign? Shouldn't we be looking at bedrock public opinion, emotional templates, political unconscious, public mood and changing political patterns? Isn't that where elections are lost and won? It is more a long term campaign--a war of position--- than a question of tactics in a day to day battle.

For instance, should not the ALP be trying to deal with the conservative blue collar workers continuing their drift to the LNP as the left decamps to the Greens?

An example. In Adelaide the Liberals now hold the new seat of Wakefield. That means the Liberals are representing traditional rock solid working class areas such as Elizabeth and Salisbury. That is a huge shift.

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aftermath

Well the results of the federal election have certainly turned out so very differently to what every one had predicted, apart from the bookies.

See this ALP dreaming (Latham by 8 seats) over at Road to Surfdom. Tim says that the dead hand of Howardism would be overthrown and Latham would renew and reinvigorate the body politic with a win by 8 seats.

I had reckoned that Howard would be returned to a historic 4th win with a reduced margin and without the control of the Senate. Others held to the cliffhanger position.

How so very wrong that cliffhanger judgement was.

I had never imagined that the LNP would be returned with a big swing to it (around 3.5%), an increased majority (probably greater than 7) and control of the Senate. It is a resounding victory. A huge win for the LNP. Devastation, tears and recriminations for the ALP (especially from Tasmania).

The election expresses a major historical shift. The centre of electoral politics has collapsed completely and then polarized into conservative and progressive. Social conservatism is in the ascendancy in a now deeply divided nation. Chris at Back Pages sees himself as an exile on main street.

The Greens won less than expected: 8 per cent of the lower house vote across the nation. They failed to gain any lower house seats which was expected, but they did not do as well as expected in the Senate. It is unclear how many Senate seats they will get in addition to the won by Christine Milne in Tasmania.(Or will it also be one each in NSW, Queensland, WA and SA? Will they become the new political force?)

The Howard Government only needs one extra vote to pass its legislation in the Senate. That will come from the Judaized Christian conservative Family First, after it gained a Senate Seat in Victoria. The 4 Democrats in the Senate are irrelevant in terms of balance of power. They are now on life support for the next 3 years, when they quietly fade to black.

So why Family First and not the Greens as expected in the Senate?

Suprise suprise. The ALP preferenced Family First ahead of the Greens in Victoria (in order to prop up their social conservative Senator Jacinta Collins?) The Greens have only half a quota in Victoria. If they had gained the Labor preferences from the .6 surplus (after the ALP failed to gain a third Senate seat), then the Greens would have gained the Senate seat in Victoria. So a socially conservative ALP (remember the DLP mentality?) helped put Family First into the Senate, thereby giving Howard the control of the Senate. The ALP preferred Family First to win the seat than the Greens.

So it is not simply the case that the Labor Party didn't make a convincing enough case to bring people around to the need for progressive change. Why do people keep on seeing the ALP as socially progressive? That is only one strand within the party. Why is the dead hand within the ALP ( its anti-progressive, pro-life, Catholic strand) ignored.

And the upshot of a Senate without a balance of power? Telstra will be sold, industrial relations reform will go through, as will cross media ownership and disability pension reform. After June 2005 a massive agenda of social change will take place during the next three years. That is the significance of this election.

So the ALP has shot itself in the foot. It's strategy should have been to block Howard gaining control of the Senate, not help to give him control. Their party machine is concerned with short-term tactics at the expense of long-term strategy.

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October 9, 2004

Election day

I will be handing out how to vote cards all day in the Liberal heartland of the Barossa. I won't be back in Adelaide until latter tonight, just in time to catch Antony Green's election trend predictions on the ABC's Australia Votes.

Here is a view of what happens underneath the glossy media surfaces:

We have got richer and more prosperous. But we have become meaner, less kind and generous to one another and more afraid as well.

That has been the tradeoff. That tradeoff has now become part of the nation's political unconscious. Free markets + religiously informed social conservatism.

Leunig hopes that this will change today. Alas, truth in government (refugees and Iraq) has not been a key issue in this federal election.

Update
It was all over by 7.15pm apparently. By then it was realized that it was impossible for Labor to win the election and that the ALP was likely to emerge with fewer seats than before. That is what I heard around 7.30pm when I got back from the Barossa and turned on the TV. Then it was only a question of how bad it was going to get for the ALP; and whether it could make gains in SA and WA.

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October 8, 2004

Election Eve: it's the economy

I cannot call the election. It is beyond me. I don't have the skills or the knowledge to do so. I reckon its still line ball. It could go either way. The Coalition will lose seats and the ALP will gain some. From what I can gather it still depends on the large number of undecideds.

I fear the worst.

But do check out Poll Bludger Mumble. And Back Pages, as Chris has the ALP surging ahead. Scott Wickstein over at Troppo Armadillo punts for the ALP

The Canberra Press Gallery is saying that Howard will win despite the lift in the primary vote for the ALP and the surging green vote. The ALP just cannot get the 13 seats required. So argues Laura Tingle in the Australian Financial Review. The ALP may win 13 but lose 5 says Lenore Taylor in the AFR. (I concur.) A narrow Coalition win says Crikey.

From what I can make out most of the newspapers are siding with the LNP. The reason they give is economic prosperity and economic growth, despite the lack of a fourth term reform agenda by the Coalition, and it looking very tired. I concur. The economy is the key.

The Australian Financial Review is typical, as it acknowledges these flaws, but then pumps iron for the LNP. The LNP's platform it says:

"... appeals more than Labor's to the qualities Australia needs to overcome the competitive challenges of the 21st century. Mr Howard at least makes the link between past sacrifices and present prosperity. Labor takes the fruits of reform for granted, and concentratres on doling them out to favoured groups----lower-income earners, two-income families public services --rather than than on ensuring future harvests."

Oh, the pork barrelling and handouts to all and sundry by Howard is conveniently forgotten. Were not the handouts the real golden thread of Howard's campaign? This is spin not analysis.

The AFR goes on after praising Peter Costello as experienced and capable:

"Labor's front bench has too many weak links especially in economic policy.When the pork and regrets are stripped away, the Coalition would do more to reward effort and enterprise and promote growth than Labor's resort to the retro-fashions of redistribution and ever larger public services. That, and Labor's cynical obstruction of reform in opposition, should be enough to give John Howard his coveted fourth election win."

How odd. Latham is all about reward and effort in the classic neo-liberal style. He is willing to move beyond the Hilmer reforms of the public sector to a reform of the Trade Practices Act, so as to stop big companies from using their market power to damage competitors. It is the Coalition resisting increased competition to protect the big end of town.

The neo-liberal Latham just disappears out the window. So does the big tax and spend Howard Government described by John Quiggin.

What can we say? The AFR has embraced cartoon politics.

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October 4, 2004

Onward the Greens

Steve Lewis in The Australian has made his call. He says:

"It's time . . . to declare Mark Latham the winner of this election campaign. Barring some extraordinary mishap over the next five days, the Labor leader will finish this marathon a clear points winner over John Howard."

I reckon so too. The tide is flowing Latham's way in a fear and bait campaign played by both sides. It has done so in spite of this counter to the ALP + Greens electoral alliance:

Leak

Has the tidal flow been enough? Or will the Coalition just hang on? Will the LNP lose the campaign but win the election?

You can sense the vulnerability of the Coalition. Medicare Gold highlighted that. Howard's messages during the campaign have largely been reactive, homing in on Latham's inexperience and running a scare campaign about the "threat" of higher interest rates under a Labor Government. Howard has been playing catch-up to his Latham, in spite of the hint of a forward-looking fourth term agenda: on building vocational skills, a stronger emphasis on vocational education, and the national water initiative. So are we going to see a big Coalition advertising campaign that is overwhelmingly negative in the final week?

Steve Lewis qualifies his call. He says that his money still remains on a narrow Coalition victory. Ken Parish concurs.

Does that mean a polarised electorate, one supporting the Coalition in the House of Representatives and favouring the Greens in the Senate to put a brake on the Government. The Greens have become the new "third force" in the Senate, and they have done so at the expense of the ALP and Democrats.

That is my reading of the desire for change, as of this moment. It's still the prosperous economy that is blocking the underlying desire for a more sweeping change across the political spectrum. John Howard is also blocking the desire for change by his shift from the minimal government (of neo-liberalism )to the big government (of conservatism).

John Quiggin describes the philosophical shift by John Howard's Government this way:

"The new position, most evident with Medicare, but also indicated in his education policy, might be called "Universalism + Choice". In relation to health, this means ensuring universal access to bulk billing and public hospitals while also encouraging private health insurance. Similarly, for schools it means "easing the squeeze" (Sorry!) on the public system, while still providing support for private schools across the board.

Universalism + Choice has some appeal. But, done properly, it's going to be expensive. Unless Howard stages a full-scale "promises overboard", it's unlikely we'll see significant tax cuts any time soon under a re-elected Liberal government."

And the environment, which is usually forgotten by the justice-orientated social democrats? Will the promise to save the Tasmanian forests keep the tidal flow going on the contested ground of the marginal inner city seats? The ALP has to play this green hand first. But it will be minimal change. It will not say no to logging the old growth forests now. Will another promise (to a sustainable forestry industry?) will be dangled in front of us? Will it be one with lots of wriggle room?

What is of long term policy interest is that the signs increasingly look as if the time is up for the ecological vandals in Tasmania. The tide is flowing against the logging industryand timber workers at long last. A Green Senate will keep the pressure on the major parties to do the right thing in a corporatist Tasmania to save the old growth forests.

5 October
Malcolm Mackerras makes his call in todays Australian Financial Review. He says that the Coalition will win by eight seats with the Coalition having 37 seats in the Senate, where the Greens will be a bigger party than the Democrats.

In the same issue Nick Economou says that Victoria will continue to be stalemated electorally with a minimal transfer to the ALP or no transfer at all.

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September 30, 2004

Medicare Gold?

I saw most of Mark Latham's ALP campaign launch in Brisbane on ABC television last night. The visuals were very good: they were minimalist, mostly Conservative blue, with the emphasis clearly on the message of 'Taking the Pressure off Families.' Stunning and effective imagery.

It did the job for tipping the balance of the campaign towards the ALP. It now looks as if the question is: just how many seats will the Coalition lose? To what extent can Howard limit the damage? Can they hang on? Or has the rot set in?

The Canberra Press Galley are saying Medicare Gold is a part of an ALP strike into John Howard's heartland, and an admission that Latham must penetrate the grey vote to win. Will Medicare Gold shift the older Australians in the marginals who are rusted onto Howard towards the ALP? I don't think so. Neither does Ken Parish. Will the older Australians give up their private health insurance, leave the private health insurance pool, and cause a reduction private health insurance premiums? I reckon they will keep private their health insurance.

Though I was impressed with visuals I was not impressed with the rhetoric of Latham's speech around the "Howard is waging war on Medicare. I want to build a fortress around it" meme. Consider this part of the speech:

"When he first led the Liberal Party [John Howard] said that he wanted to "take a scalpel to Medicare"...Well, that's what this election is all about. It's a referendum on the future of Medicare.

Do we want the Coalition to take us further down the American road of privatised health - a two tier system? Do we want to give John Howard another chance to put his scalpel into Medicare? Or do we want a Labor Government with a plan to save Medicare? Just one tier. One world-class health care system for all Australians.

We set up this system, we're proud of it and we're going to bring it back to its full health. Labor believes in Medicare. It's good public policy. But it also says something special about who we are, about the things that make us uniquely Australian. It says that in our country, if you get sick then someone will care for you. It says that the Australian people look out for each other. That we help our mates and those in need."

John Howard is wandering around inside Medicare with buckets cash. That is hardly taking a scalpel to it. John Quiggin is not impressed by that. He says that Howard is:

"...hampered by the fact that, for all but the last six months or so of his 30 years in public life, he's opposed Medicare and done his best to destroy it. He was Treasurer in the Fraser government which actually did destroy the first version, introduced by Whitlam".

Historically accurate. But no credence is given to Howard judging that it is politically necessary for him to accept Medicare and not destroy it.

Latham's rhetoric is very misleading. He says that Medicare has been one of the great ding-dong battles of Australian public life---a battle of principle on health policy. Presumably he means public v private. Labor is investing in public health care whilst the Coalition pursues the privatisation of health - a system based on private insurance and private care.

Oh? does not the ALP supports the 30% rebate for private health insurance, private hospitals and private doctors who are not bulkbilling.

I realize that speeches are for the party faithful who want to celebrate, feel proud, adore their heroes, and get misty eyed about their future together. But what a conservative understanding of Medicare the ALP has: it is all about hospitals, tick and flick bulkbilling and doctors. Nothing about primary health care, or the services provided by allied health, or keeping people from needing to go to the hospitals in the first place.

What was innovative was the Commonwealth picking up the tab (hospital costs) of Australians over 75, plus guarantee them immediate access to hospital treatment. Historic healthcare reform says Chris Sheil over at Back Pages, without saying why. He goes onto predict an ALP victory, barring an unforseeen left of field event.

But Latham doesn't care whether the hospital is privately owned or state run. So he is providing support to private health care. Ssh. Don't let on that the party faithful has sold its principles on public health long ago.

But that doesn't matter cos it's the images on television that matter.

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September 27, 2004

let the good times roll

I missed the Liberal campaign launch in Brisbane on Sunday. By all accounts it was a very staged managed affair with a warm-up act called The Nationals, who whipped up the crowd with their 'I can see the Green Devil everywhere' routine. From what I hear from the whisperings within the media flows the Nats need to lift their act.

John Howard's speech said he was everybody's friend (well tradespeople, home-makers, "micro-businesses" and parents) and here is $6b cash for my latest stick-on policies to prove it. And I will ensure stability, security and reassurance. Trust me.

Leak

My gosh. The man sure has reinvented himself. He is no more the 'I will destroy Medicare' ideologue of the past. The one we were told who poured over Hayek for bed time reading in the 1970s and hung out with those who took their bearings from the US Heritage Foundation. You know, the one who believed in small government, deregulation state rights, budget surpluses, supply side economics, prudent economic management and no middle class welfare. Howard now stands for big central government, middle class welfare, business sweetners and subsidies and social conservatism.

It all sounded like an ALP launch----the Big Spend, raiding future budget surpluses and being low on funds. What has happened to The Road To Serfdom and competition policy? Poor old Peter Costello.

Ours was to be a nation united by mateship and achievement. The political enemies were those caught up in class, were full of envy wanted to take away individual choice by trying to control people.

What sort of society is envisioned? An editorialist in the Australian Financial Review has a go. They says that it is:

"...one based on freedom of choice for families, workers and individual business people and reward for individual enterprise and effort, all within a secure and compassionate conmunity built around strong families and dynamic small business."

They have forgotten about the conservative conception of the sovereign nation-state. The nation is united by mateship and assimilation, whilst the state is big, centralized and not very democratic.

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September 24, 2004

surfaces

Contrast Leak's account of what is important in an election campaign:

Leak

with this statement from Michael Costello in The Australian:

"But the No.1 underlying reality is that what in the end will win over many swinging voters is their overall impression of the two leaders. If Howard continues to campaign as bad-temperedly for the next two weeks as he has for the past two, Latham will be prime minister."

What we have is the hip pocket versuses personality.

No policies. They are irrelevant. So the phenomenon of "doctors wives", concerned with issues such as the treatment of asylum seekers or the environment. As Judith Brett points out their political culture is one of putting moral values before self-interest is continuing a long tradition of women's political engagement.

But this is of little concern to those who accept that citizens do not step outside the sanitised and rehearsed world of modern political campaign marketing a brand. It's just hip pocket (self-interest), personality (identification); or stupid us being seduced by emotive images and persuaded by fear.

This kind of account means that citizens in the seat of Adelaide do not care about the moral issues of same sex marriage (the gay marriage ban) or the River Murray.

Or that people as citizens do not care what is happening to the country.

I don't buy these kind of accounts myself. They reduce politics and the political to the market.

We citizens may be concerned about what has happened to social democracy as a result of it modernizing itself through its embrace of a neo-liberal mode of governance.

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September 18, 2004

3 puzzles

Some puzzles:

The sunny optimism shown by the Back Page crowd about the ALP on a winning run, when I reckon that Howard won the campaign in the 1st three weeks.

John Wanna in The Australian has a different tack. He says that:

"National polls have the Coalition frozen on 43-46 per cent of the primary vote and that hasn't moved since June this year. Labor is equally stuck on a primary vote of 40-42 per cent - again, not moving over the same period....the two-party-preferred outcome [is] a dead heat on 50-50 for the past two polls. An alternative explanation is that national trends hide substantial movements at a regional level. Tasmanian and South Australian polls have both shown much larger swings - up to 8 per cent - but they tend to cancel each other out. "

Wanna says that the polls indicate that no one is listening and no one is shifting their political opinion.

Oh yeah? How come the trend in the Adelaide marginals has shifted to the ALP? How come Tasmania is now going stir crazy from Howard on his white charger coming to save the old growth forests? It is now possible that Bass could shift to the Coalition.

My judgement is that Howard has clawed his way back from being behind on both the primary and the two party preferred votes. On the latter he has drawn level, if not inching ahead. That makes the green preferences flowing to the ALP crucial for the marginal seats it hopes to win, with the Greens now sitting on around 6% nationally. They need a big flow ---preferrably 80% or more in specific marginal seats.

The Age poll supports this reading, as does Hugh McKay's qualitative research. Is it that comfortable feeling coming from economic prosperity? Although Howard is not travelling well in SA (yesterday's Newspoll in The Australian), it appears that the ALP is not gaining enough seats to shift from the plus 3 in SA to the needed 12. The flow to the ALP is yet to happen in Queensland.

Can it? How will WA play out?

The second puzzle is the view that the election will be about social policy now that we have the Lib-Lab convergence on the economy and national security. That view recently stated by Peter Hartcher overlooks the environment:

Leak

It's the blinkers about the environment that is the puzzle not the Lib-Lab convergence.The environment means climate change (and energy) old-growth forests and rivers. The surfacing of these issues last week (rivers & forest) indicates Hartcher's blinkers. The writers at Back Pages and Road to Surfdom also downplay the environment as a central issue. By and large Sydney is pretty bored by Adelaide's obsessive concerns about the health of the River Murray.

The third puzzle. Why has the ALP taken the stick to both single mums in the tax policy and the Medicare safety net in health policy? Why make such a big deal about it being good to hit those on the bottom so hard? Is that negativity what is deemed necessay to win the aspirational vote in Sydney? Does that mean the poor in the regions will be sacrificed for the prosperity of Sydney suburbanites in the name of the rationality of the utilitarian calculus? It is a real puzzle that the ALP Labor is going to the election promising many single income families that they would be noticeably less well off, if the ALP is elected.

That is new Labor: it's ethos, in Evans Jones words, baked from "the free market, self-help and parsimonious charity by the well-heeled and sanctimonious."

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September 16, 2004

talking sense

One of the big gaps in reform and directing public expenditure has been our schools. It is one area where increased expenditure would have a significant benefit. The federal government is in a position to do this as it has much more money than it needs.

This cartoon strikes as a pretty reasonable critique of consumer choice as well as indicating the fairness of the ALP's education policy, which was announced yesterday. That begins to address the inequities built into our two-tier education system.

Tandberg.

The ALP policy puts the emphasis where it should be: on directing more of the flow of public money to public education, whilst giving a hand to the poorer low fee private schools. If the old 'Knowledge Nation' rhetoric is to have any substance, then public schools and the poorer private schools need to have the tools and resources to enable students to acquire an education that would enable them to work and live within a global economy.

This does not do away with choice. It is to ensure that consumer choice (for government or non-government schools) is linked to the public good, rather than being a stand alone value in the free market.

Let us not get too carried with the ALP rediscovering is social democratic heritage. As Kenneth Davidson points out:

"....Latham Labor is committed to pass in the Senate the Howard Government's inequitable funding scheme for schools in 2005 - and as a result, no matter who wins the election on October 9, the proportion of Commonwealth funding going to government schools will continue to contract until at least 2006."

Still it is a step anything towards re-establsihing equity in the operating resources between government and private schools in Australia.

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September 15, 2004

rings around Labor

I had always thought that NSW was the ALP state--the jewel in the Labor crown. I also thought that the federal ALP would hold its own there --unlike SA which is sliding away from the ALP. My understanding was NSW was the Labor heartland--hence all that talk about ladders of opportunity and suburban aspirationals. I also thought that those working within the global economy, with their ability to get good jobs and travel were cosmopolitan ALP professionals, were rusted on prosperous Keating types.

Then I read Jennifer Hewitt's piece in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required) entitled 'Labor's Albatross in Lathamland' and realised how out of touch I was. The albatross is the Carr Government, which is very much on the nose--and rightly so. I knew that. The Carr Government is even worse than the Rann Government.

It was what Jennifer said about federal ALP that suprised me. It challenged my image of the global city of Sydney and showed how out of date it was. I will outline her argument as it is not online. Jennifer says:

"The 1996 election that swept John Howard into power dislodged Labor's once form grip on Sydney's outer suburbs---and it shows little evidence of coming back in any one of the new housing estates pushing out Sydney's urban sprawl. Those particular Howard battlers are still battling with Howard in Sydney."

I was suprised to learn that federal Labor only holds 19 seats out of 50 in NSW, despite its history as a Labor heartland. And even more suprised to learn that Hewitt reckons that the common assessment is that ALP has given up any idea of making any big gains. So NSW will be basically a status quo state. It is about limiting the damage---and concentrating on Brisbane and Adelaide?

Jennifer then describes those 19 ALP seats. They appear to be in the middle arc of the inner west and south of Sydney: in the more traditional working class areas that include entrenched poverty, lower skilled migration, older housing stock, unemployment and welfare recepients.

This arch of seats is then contrasted with that of the outer suburban seats of the new housing estates from up on the central coast down through Penrith, Campbell town and Liverpool with their aspirational voters.That is increasingly Liberal territory. And there is a third arch of seats: those who have benefited from the dynamic global economy. This arc runs down the coast the north shore through the CBD and the eastern suburbs out to the airport ---is mainly Liberal territory.

Does that mean the ALP is being squeezed in Sydney town? That it is trying to break out of the squeeze? It would appear that the federal ALP has a Sydney problem. How is it going to fix it?

Is that why the ALP is now going strong on fighting terrorism smashing JI, finding Bin Laden, and doing it all in quicktime? It's their message to the outer suburban seats of the new housing estates?

Jennifer goes on to say that the ALP can make up 5 marginal seats in NSW, though only one is in Sydney town itself--Parramatta, which is held by Ross Cameron. What is crucial though is the Sydney problem: the ALP's defence of the middle arc the middle arc of the inner west and south of Sydney cuts into its appeal to the new outer sububan aspirational voter. It is not proving easy for the ALP to break out of the Liberal circle.

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September 8, 2004

reversals

The media flows are full of the ALP's big agenda setting item designed to give them the economic creditibility they crave--it is the $11 billion tax and family package partly financed by increased taxes and changes to superannuation.

To all intents and purposes the "ease the squeeze" tax policy is the centrepiece of the Opposition's campaign pitch. According to the Canberra Press Gallery, the job of the tax and family package is to reignite the Labor campaign after polls showed the ALP lost the first week of the election campaign. Will it do the trick of stopping the slow drift back to the Coalition? Or will the package be gunned down?

Rowe

The three strands of the ALP's complex tax and family package are:

* giving a tax cut of up to $8 a week to everyone earning less than $52,000 - thus plugging the gap the Howard Government's tax package;

*overhauling and enhancing the family benefits system into a single new payment. It does away with Family Tax Benefit Part B, combining this money with Family Tax Benefit Part A and the Coalition's $600 supplement to form a new and simpler payment;

*reducing tax-free threshold from $6000 to $8500 to ease poverty traps by allowing people to earn more money before they start losing welfare benefits.

It is both tax and welfare to work. It is a carefully targeted, modest and responsible package, which avoids the sordid bidding contest for votes that neglects the long-term problems to which the spare cash in the budget surpluses ought to be spent on. The tax side extends the Costello tax cuts to the people that Costello ignored, whilst the welfare-to-work is a reform program that provides recognition of women as workers and helps mothers wanting to return to the workforce.

Politically, it will neutralize tax as a negative issue for Labor.

The ALP package is very neo-liberal. The "ease the squeze" rhetoric is about providing incentives for people to get into the workforce, and rewarding battlers for their hard work as they climb the "ladder of opportunity". It is an appeal to the suburban moral middle class, whose core moral values are still centred around the protestant work ethic.

It's central thrust is that a life of welfare is not acceptable and that work is the best solution to poverty. Since quality and affordable child care is not easily available, nor part of Labor's package, - who then cares for the children?
Secondly, what about those families in regional Australia where opportunities to work are scarce, or the educational institutions (eg., TAFE) are badly undersourced? There are plenty of jobless families with two or more children living in that situation.

Note how the ALP's spending emphasis is on tax cuts. In contrast, very little is being spent by them on health and education, or on quality and affordable child care. It is the Coalition who is spending big on health and education. Is this not a reversal of the usual positions?

9 September
Maybe I'm misreading the ALP package. Could this be a first step in a major tax and welfare-to work reform? One that the Coalition was unable to do?

Or are we seeing what I've argued before: that this is a very rightwing ALP and, if it gains power, it will work with the Coaliton in the Senate to pass legislation. When was the last tine you heard the ALP attack ACOSS when that ngo points out that low-income families with two or more children and some private income would lose under the ALP's tax and family package?

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September 7, 2004

Health: negating ALP advantage

This captures the pressure the ALP is under:

Petty

The missing page is the underfunding of Medicare and the public health system.

Hence this. The Coalition will extend the Medicare rebate for visits to general practitioners from 85 per cent to 100 per cent of the scheduled fee. This will play well in those marginal electorates with a shortage of doctors, where health is one of the top two issues, and doctors already charge $15 to $20 above the bulk-billing rate.

Labor owns the health issue and it should be able to win a debate on health, given that the Coalition once promised to dismantle Medicare. Yet what we see is the continual chipping away of the ALP advantage by spending big money on health. Howard is determined to own health as a political issue for the Coalition by tightly squeezing the ALP.

So it comes as no suprise to me that the Coalition has come from behind in the polls and is now in a dead heat with Labor on a two-party preferred basis.

The ALP is currently talking about restructuring the federal compact with a pooled funding arrangement between the states and commonwealth. It is a limited redesign with a technocratic focus on change management and big system expertise.

Neither political party is addressing GP shortage (more university places) or competition to GP's and specialists from a variety of alllied health professionals. There is a huge workforce shortage. As the Australian Medical Association president, Bill Glasson, says:

".... unless we can get more doctors into the system, particularly general practitioners, there are not going to be the doctors there to see the patients of tomorrow...We have got to make general practice more attractive - it is the cornerstone of the medical system in this country."

As Glasson points out, there are limitations to the ALP's concern with bulk billing (eg., getting the bulk-billing rates in Australia back up to 80 per cent):

"Bulk-billing is not a measure of the health of the medical system in this country. Bulk-billing is just a means by which doctors can bill the government for the service that they provide."

But it is good cash flow for the GP and specialists all the same.

However, Glasson is right about the need to focus on workforce issues. There is a big doctor shortage, especially in the regions outside the capital cities.

What Glasson does not do is to talk about general practice in terms of a diversity of health professionals. If the ALP is obsessed with bulk billing rates of 80%, then the AMA is obsessed with doctors running the health system.

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September 1, 2004

shift in power

Some journalists are fascinated by the Liberal heartland being in revolt and the possibility of Wentworth being won by the ALP.

However, I found a specific media conference more fascinating. It happened the day after the ALP once again decided that it will not subpoena ministerial aides to appear before a new inquiry into the children overboard affair.

Now I did not attend the press conference yesterday, nor did I see it televised.

But did I hear it on the radio whilst in Canberra writing a speech. The news report does not capture what actually happened: the shift in the power dynamics in the Senate from the Democrats to the Greens.

What had started as a joint media conference between two parties to get some oxygen in the election campaign ended up with the Democrats sidelined and silenced whilst the Greens were in the centre debating their polices on drugs with a Herald Sun journalist and the media.

The Democrats, to all intents and purposes, were a political prop for the Greens. Or you could say that the Democrats had a brief ride on the Green's comet.

Welcome to the new balance of power in the Senate arising from the Greens picking up seats at the expense of the Democrats. It is a Green Senate we will be looking at.

So you can see why the Murdoch Press is on the attack. Yesterday it was an attack on the Green's policy to investigate alternatives to the current drugs policy of criminalisation, which results in soaring crime rates, rampant corruption and family tragedy. At the conference the Greens were advocating harm-minimisation.

The Coalition Government is trying to damage Bob Brown by rolling out its negative campaign. The Green-bashing (the Greens are out to destroy our social fabric etc etc) will give the Greens ever more airplay.

That media conference was more informative than The Advertiser's insights into the marginal seat of Adelaide. The insight is at a street talk level and it says that there is a big flight from politics in the seat of Adelaide.

Apparently people are living in their own rave bubbles in Adelaide. They have no problems. They have litttle concern about bettering the lives of others. Apparently, we are quite content living in our rave bubbles. We are cool. We watch Australian Idol and aspire to own digital television with 56 channels on a 128-centimetre flat-screen TV.

Adelaide has been creating national waves lately.

Suprisingly, in one of the most marginal seats in Australia, the ALP has a low presence. Little money has been put into the campaign in Adelaide by the national campaign office. The local campaign has the appearance of being run on a shoestring, with little attention being devoted to local issues. Perhaps the ALP candidate (a political staffer for our neo-liberal state Treasurer who is obsessed with credit ratings) is too busy trying to raise money from chook raffles.

Adelaide is obviously not a priority for the ALP. Is SA a priority for the ALP? Apparently all the campaigns in the marginal Liberal seats are being run on a shoe string.

Alas the Greens have a low presence in the inner city seat of Adelaide, unlike here. What a pity. Democracy requires that we break up the two horse race as much as possible.

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August 30, 2004

Election day 2: figures

It is the second day of the election campaign. Parliament House feels ghost-like. Only the Senate is sitting. No one really wants to be here much. The Liberals look quite jaunty and confident in the corridors. Their polling is looking good in the marginals? Do they see more hope, prosperity and stabilityin the figures?

Pryor

The policy differences can be found here.

I read Malcolm Mackerras opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review on the plane to Canberra this morning. He is briming with confidence in his own predictions. He is predicting that the Coaliton will control the parliament as a whole (with 38 Coalition Senators, eight Green Senators and 4 Democrats).

Figures are reality to Malcolm. They are what really exists. Not hopes, fears, resentments, unease and pride--all that heart stuff that lies underneath the public issues.

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August 23, 2004

Election Campaign#3

Does Rowe have the state of play wrong?

Rowe

Latham is not really battered and bruised. It would appear from recent polls that the trend of John Howard's clawback of the ALP's two party preferred vote lead has run out of puff. What is even worse is that the catchup trend of the past month or so may be falling away, with the gap between the two major parties now beginning to widen. That would be bad news for Howard.

What now for Howard? One strategy is more money to be spent on shoring up the Coalition's electoral base?

The latest on this front is increasing the subsidies to private health insurance for the aged users of the health system. The recent health moves have effectively boxed the Latham-led ALP into a corner. The party of publicly-funded universal health care now confirms that it would keep the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate if it won government.

Have you noticed how the ALP keeps on moving to the right whilst its rhetoric remains the same?

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August 15, 2004

A green senate?

It looks like the Olympics have won out over the federal election:

Rowe

I'm not suprised. Howard still needs to keep the momentum going in the crucial marginals in Queensland, Adelaide and Western Australia. However Chris Sheil agrees with Alan Ramsay's judgement that "the Government's hard-won political momentum has gone." Has it been lost over the doubts about the undermining of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in the American free trade agreement?

Has Howard's momentum gone? The lost ground on health can be, and is being countered. Doctors in outer metropolitan and regional areas will be given extra bulk-billing rebates by the federal government to help make working in those areas more attractive. That is an important policy shift against the ALP. They are effectively countered on their own terrain.

Some are annoyed by all the speculation about the election date. Yet the way things are currently organized in federal parliament setting the election date is a part of the campaign tactics to gain advantage over the enemy.

It continues to look like the Democrat vote has collapsed whilst the Australian Greens are riding high enough to gain the seats they need in the Senate to be publicly funded as a political party. They need 5 seats. If the Greens gain those 5 Senate seats then this will make it hard for the whoever (Coalition or the ALP) gains control of the House of Representatives.

The Senate is the key, but few are thinking about the implications of that. Who is polling the Senate? My judgement is that the LIB LAB Coalition we saw around both the FTA and the same sex Marriage Bill last week is an indication of what is to come.

Now wouldn't it be nice if the Greens knocked off the ALP in a few inner city seats in Melbourne (eg., the seat of Melbourne) or Sydney?

August 18

From what I can gather the inner seats of Sydney that are under threat from the Greens are Grayndler held by Anthony Albanese and the seat of Sydney. I saw a media grab of Peter Garrett being used by ALP strategists to roll back the Green threat and shore up the ALP's left flank.

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August 10, 2004

Maybe

What the cartoon does do is capture the way the ALP has been forced back onto the ropes despite its clever tactical moves. The ALP must be hoping that the desire for change within the electorate keeps them off the ropes and does not allow the Coalition's support to consolidate. The Coalition's weakest areas remain Queensland and South Australia. And the ALP is saying it believes the election will be won or lost in the formal five-week campaign, once Howard names the date.


Pryor

The cartoon does get the situation wrong. Not just because it ignores the role of the media in the election campaign--eg., the strong anti-ALP bias of The Australian. What it ignores is that the contest is too close for Latham to be trussed up and roasted. What the cartoon does capture is the way the honeymoon of Latham has gone and Lathma's aura has been relentlessly worn way.

The image is how the Howard Government would like to frame the situation a the moment. But we need not accept the framing.

Do the differences matter? Is it not Tweeddledom and Tweedledee doing their dance?

John Howard will accept Labor's minor amendments to the US free trade agreement, grateful that he ALP has not bothered to dig deep into the details of the FTA agreement. Mark Latham will support a government bill designed to outlaw gay and lesbian marriage, that is due to be debated by the end of this week. They are both singing harmony from the same hymn sheet. Is that a better image?

afternoon update

At the moment federal Parliament is dead. Nothing much is happening. It is suspended time with people going through the motions. There is no energy or fireworks in the forum. Free trade dominates but we have no serious debate on the issues that have been identified. The issues that are being raised by the Greens and minor parties in the Senate are simply ignored. The Coalition and ALP are indifferent. It's a national disgrace.

For another example of a lack of a serious public debate taking place we need to look no further than the responses to the letter from 43 former top military and diplomatic figures, which criticized the Howard Government over the Iraq war. That letter called for for truth in politics from whoever wins the election. And the response from the government side? The parliamentary secretary De-Anne Kelly called them "doddering daiquiri diplomats" whilst Warren Entsch, another parliamentary secretary (the one who wears an ear-ring) labelled them "disgruntled old men"). These two attack the person and ignore the issue.

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August 5, 2004

things stall

I've just returned to Adelaide from the Canberra hothouse to find that the storms have passed and it has stopped raining for the moment. Even with a bit of rain on Monday and Tuesday Canberra was still very dry compared to a soggy Adelaide.

Parliament was strangely quiet during the day--everybody was living in a shadow land waiting for the Mexican standoff to finish. Few paid attention to the empty polemics in the House of Representatives.

Still the ALP felt good. As they understood it, the tables had been turned. They were no longer on the political rack having their internal contradictions around the FTA stretched. Howard had to swallow a bitter pill. It was a moment to savour.

Bill Leak

You can see why those connected to the ALP are feeling good. They escaped the trap set by Howard. They cannot be accused of being deeply anti-American anymore. They are now the defender of the PBS, a mainstay of Australia's "universal" health system. Whilst the Labor protects cheap medicine for Australians the Government caves into the multinational drug companies. Health has become a mainstay election issue, and the great political divide on the US alliance has been successfully fudged.

Nobody is sure how the domestic political stand-off will end, when, or how. Or even when the election would be called. Everything has stalled. But you can sense the momentum building for a September 18 election to be called at the end of this session of Parliament.

The upshot of all this is that we had three days of parliament and no legislation was passed in the Senate. No legislation was even considered by the Senate, apart from the enabling legislation for the Free Trade Agreement. The three days were devoted to campaigning by the political parties even though an election had not even been called.

It is a strange political moment to be living in. A shadowland world.

August 6
The news this morning suggested Howard is moving towards accepting the ALP ambit under the cover of lots of political noise. He has little choice, if he wants to continue with his campaign to push Labor and Latham back onto the political ropes. The energy levels of the ALP are up. Chris has a bounce in his step. Guido recognizes the tactic employed from way back.

Maybe there will be some legislation passed in Parliament next week now? And we won't get real policy debate in Parliament next week over free trade. It, and the media commentary, will be on short-term political gain.

But you can bet a dime that the ALP will remain silent on the intellectual property provisions in the enabling legisation and the text of the FTA. They reckon that Mickey Mouse should get ever more protection under the guise of free trade deal.

Oh, it has started raining again in Adelaide. Pouring down.

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August 4, 2004

Free Trade: Intellectual Property?

I see that the ALP has decided to fight an election on his minor and largely symbolic changes to the US free trade deal. Mark Latham has declared that the Howard Government must accept a key amendment to protect the health system. If he did then the FTA would pass the Senate. However, the Coalition is rejecting Latham's call for a little amendment to the US free trade agreement (FTA) to protect the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Is it clever politics? Well, the move keeps the ALP troops onside and pressures the Howard Government so that it is seen to be defending the big US drug companies trying to rort the little Aussie PBS.

Is this the much needed circuit breaker for the ALP? The point when the tide starts to flow back to the ALP? I doubt it. But then it depends on how the Canberra Press Gallery frames the politics.

Today we had lots of polemical froth and bubble around tactics and strategy that has turned into a Mexican standoff. Will the ALP stand firm? Do they have doubts already? Can they afford to be seen to crumble again?

Pryor

The events inside the Canberra hothouse reinforce the feeling that the FTA is about politics, not economics or trade. The real trade and economic issues have been sidelined. It is about the politics of economic integration not the politics of free trade.

An example is the Intellectual Property (IP) obligations under the Free Trade Agreement, and the implications the US attempt to establish a strong IP regime for its owners has for Australia's IP regime. From what I can gather the US is using the Free Trade Agreement to improve its global intellectual protection. This approach to the value of intellectual property goes against competition policy and cheaper consumer goods.

It does not appear that a stronger IPR regime will generate economic benefits for Australia in the form of innovation and creativity, which in turn, increase productivity and economic growth.

Is there not a contradiction here? The purpose of a free trade agreement is to reduce government interference in trade across international borders. The purpose of making IP rights stronger is to interfer into the market for the benefit of the property right holders.

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July 30, 2004

Federal election: WA

There is an article The Australian by Peter van Onselen, a lecturer in political science at Edith Cowan University, which spells out the marginal seat situation in WA. He says that this year's election will be close, but challenges the assumption of a uniform swing across the nation, or the ALP winning because of its preference lead in the western suburbs of Sydney.What we do know is that this election is close so it will revert to trench warfare in the marginals, as Labor tries to claw back the dozen or so seats it needs to govern in its own right.

The ALP is saying that it can hang onto its maginal seats in WA bag two from the Coalition and increase its seven seats to nine. It has the weaponry etc etc.

We need to step away from the spin. van Onselen identifies 4 marginal seats in WA:

"Perth houses four marginal seats - Canning, Sterling (sic), Hasluck and Swan. Interestingly, only the first of these is held by the Coalition. The other three, all with margins of 2 per cent or less, are Labor seats. Simply put, Howard believes he can pick up Labor seats in the west. Why does Howard believe that?"

The answer has to do with the parochialism of WA. The change in the ALP leadership from Beazley to anyone from a state other than WA was bound to carry the risk of Labor losing seats in the west, whether the leader was Crean or Latham. The Beazley factor is crucial. Hence the return of Beazley to the front bench can only benefit the federal ALP in WA.

So where does that leave the ALP? van Onselen goes on to say:

"Labor insiders have noted that the ALP can't win this year's federal election in the west, it can only lose it. Equally, Coalition strategists have been targeting Perth Labor marginals for some time. Howard's trip to WA this week is his fourth this year. Factor in the unpopularity of the Gallop Labor Government and WA is a soft target for the Coalition."

That Howard is spending so much time in the West is an indication of party polling revealing an opportunity to catch Labor napping. The ALP has taken their eye off WA?

Do we give Canning to the Coalition? Where does that leave Stirling, Hasluck and Swan? With the ALP hanging on after a grim struggle? Howard reckons he has a chance in Hasluck, with its margin for the ALP of 1.78 per cent.

This is the possibility canvassed by van Onselen:

"If the election is tight, it may be that Latham thinks he has won the prime ministership, picking up enough seats in NSW, Queensland and South Australia early in the count. But if Howard wins all three Labor held marginals in Perth, that could deliver him a narrow fourth term majority."

WA is even less on on the radar screen of most national commentators than SA. I have very little knowledge of the current issues in the ALP marginals. They are urban seats, and so their issues would be quite different from the those in the marginals along the Queensland coast.

In the latter there is a cocktail of rural discontent over globalization, competition policy and deregulation, the ongoing rationalization of the farm sector and the decline in the services in the bush. This political backlash, which generated the populist protest of Pauline Hanson in the 1990s, places the National Party under threat.

So what is going on in Perth's marginal seats in terms of issues? It cannot be all about the Beazley factor, given that all politics is local.

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July 25, 2004

the Latham face of Labor

This is put into play in Australia to suggest that the Mark Latham ALP is a socially conservative and neo-liberal party--a variation on the one we have in power in SA. It is one in which the appeal to large numbers of middle-class, socially conservative voters outweighs the social democrat agenda concerned to help people at the bottom of the ladder largely through taxes and public service investment.

Is this what the Third Way now means in Australia?

Steve Bell

The UK article says that Blairism is just Thatcherism softened for a soppier age. Here is the relevant bit:

"If we have a third term of Blair, where will the country end up? There is no need to consult the crystal ball, because we have a road map, the five-year plans spewing out of government. Virtually every part of the rhetoric is familiar to those of us who covered the Tory administrations of the 80s and 90s - more choice and less bureaucracy in schools and hospitals; an end to 60s liberalism in the criminal justice system and the classroom; tough asylum policies; bobbies on the beat; "prison works"; no attempt to reverse privatisations, even when they proved a disaster. Abroad, we see a deep suspicion of Europe in general and France in particular. Though he is being cautious in public, it is clear that Blair would much prefer to see another term for Bush and his neo-con clique in Washington, than a moderately progressive Democrat in the White House. Whatever this is, it certainly isn't Labour politics."

The key difference here is that a Latham ALP would prefer to see a moderately progressive Democrat in the White House, rather than another term for Bush and his neo-con clique in Washington.

Let's be honest folks. Is there going to be that much difference in governance if the Coalition loses out to a Latham ALP?

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July 24, 2004

Federal Election: its close

In contrast to the optimism shown here my judgement remains the same. The election is close. The ALP is just ahead on two party preferred votes, the race is probably tightening, the trend in the primary vote moving back to the Coalition, and Latham is being worn down by the Coalition's relentless pressure.

Though it is hard to be interested in the drip drip drip of the political tap, it is interesting to see the ALP continually move to the right under pressure. If the ALP succeeds in regaining power, it will be a very conservative Labor Government. It will work with the Coalition in the Senate to pass legislation whilst denouncing the Australian Greens as undemocratic and holding the nation to ransom.

Both Howard and Latham were campaigning in Queensland this week selling their wares. The Coalition removed fees from Kakadu National Park, and the Flood Report into the intelligence on Iraq was released. That said that Australia went to war on the basis of intelligence that was "thin, ambiguous and incomplete" and that there was an "intelligence failure" on weapons of mass destruction. Also announced was a package to upgrade security at Australia's ports. For its part the ALP announced a women's policy, an afterhours Medicare policy and a dairy policy.

Whilst many were being hairy chested on terrorism others were doing vaudeville:

Tandberg

It is more memorable image than the religious one.

What we do not know is the polling in the marginal seats, apart from the unreliable polling in the state newspapers. The Advertiser poll in SA showed the ALP ahead in Adelaide, the Libs ahead in Hindmarsh but struggling in Makin. I would say that it is tighter than that now. The ALP is probably ahead in Hindmarsh.

In todays Australian Financial Review Lenore Taylor says that it is the marginal seats of Queensland and NSW where the ALP must dismantle Howard's lead. What do we know about the marginals in Queensland and NSW? Taylor says the Courier-Mail poll shows a big swing to the ALP in Dickson, a small swing to the Coalition in Longman with Hinkler too close to call.

And NSW? Taylor says that a recent McNair Ingenuity Research Poll (with a very small sample) showed the Coalition well ahead in Paterson but trailing the ALP in Eden Monaro, Dobell and Parramatta.

Has the ALP picked up the 8 seats needed? Sure thing say the ALP spinners. If it had been otherwise, Howard would have called an election by now.

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July 20, 2004

strange views

Both Newspoll and ACNielsen show that the ALP is still hanging on after the distribution of preference, even though its primary vote is continuing to fall and the momentum is favouring the government.

The ACNielsen poll shows the coalition's primary vote rising 2 points to 45 per cent, and the ALP down 2 to 40 per cent. But the two-party preferred vote - the result after preferences are distributed - has Labor leading 52 to 48 per cent, unchanged from a month ago. Newspoll shows the that on a two-party preferred basis the ALP had a lead of 51 to 49 per cent.

Here is the spin by Denis Shanahan in The Australian:

"After two tumultuous weeks - starting with the Labor leader's emotional press conference about his private life - the standing of the major parties has barely changed, with the ALP keeping in touch with the Howard Government."

It should be the other way round. Do we infer that Shanahan lives in an inverted political world?

The significance of the polling means that the Coalition needs to concentrate on increasing its primary vote, since it is losing out heavily on preferences, as 77 per cent of Green voters and 70 per cent of Democrat voters say they will give Labor their preferences. Increasing the primary vote means the Coalition has to appeal to the middle ground. That means picking up the conservative end of the Labor vote.

I wonder how that looks in the marginal seats across the nation?

Does picking up the conservative end of the Labor vote mean the new environment Minister, Senator Campbell, is saying that he will continue the Government's agenda of linking the nation's future power needs to coal and oil and rejecting the global framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions? Is that why he is saying that the answer to environmental sustainability is successful business.

That sounds like the old mantra that economic growth comes first and the environmental consequences can be patched up by tossing it a bit of money. How does that square with a renewable energy industry? Do we not have the development of a thriving renewable energy industry that will greatly benefit the Australian economy and environment?

What does the Minister see when he flies over the salt scarred landscape in Western Australia en route Perth to Canbera? Dollar signs? A flourishing economy? Or does he look the other way?

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July 14, 2004

Nip 'n tuck in time

Well now. I'm sitting having my coffee in the winter sun reading the Australian Financial Review and wondering why the Coalition is not doing all that well in the Liberal marginal seats in South Australia.

I do not have any access to the private polling in these marginal seats (ie., Adelaide, Hindmarsh & Markin). My judgement about the Coalition being in trouble is based on two recent events. Consider these:

---yesterday's changes to the temporary protection visas for refugees that introduces a bit more humanitarian sensibility to the hardline detention, refugee and border protection policies that demonized refugees as criminals and terrorists. The door has been opened a tad to allow for the possibility of permanent residence. Just a tad.

----this morning's announcement that the Federal Government has backed away from imposing a low level nuclear waste dump on South Australia. The Federal Court had ruled in June that the Commonwealth's compulsory acquisition of land for a site in South Australia was unlawful. The Commonwealth Government has decided that it will not challenge that court decision in the High Court.

My reading of these events is that both issues would have continued to damage the Howard Government in the marginal seats. For instance, Peter McGauran, the Science Minister, had been heavy handed in his approach to the nuclear waste dump issue, and this had created a political backlash amongst SA liberals.

The policy switch by Howard on these two issues aims to claw back the ALP lead by bringing the social liberals (wets) back into the liberal fold. He is protecting his own base. It's a defensive move that indicates the Coalition is in real trouble in these marginal seats.

I notice in passing that Federal Labor equivocates on the issue. I don't trust them either.

Bill Leak

The ALP has also been managing a damaging issue--Iraq. The return of Kim Beazley to the front bench as Opposition spokesperson for defence has begun to neutralize the alliance issue that was damaging the ALP. The tone has already changed. It appears that the ALP is on middle ground, rather than appearing to be anti-American. Beazley's ability to uphold Australia's national interest, whilst retaining a deep sympathy to the US, will prevent an erosion of votes in the all important middle ground.

I presume that the ALP will start looking better in Western Australia, where it was not travelling well. However, unless they are on the nose, governments are good at reeling in their opponents during an election campaign. They have all the advantages of encumbency.

July 15
Gregory Hywood reckons that the ALP has blown its electoral lead of only a few months ago. The finger is pointed at an arrogant Latham's instinctive anti-Americanism. This is deemed to be ill conceived, as it placed the alliance at risk. It is tantamount to political suicide for Labor to thumb its nose at the world's sole superpower, which also happens to be Australia's closest ally.

Why is this so? Hywood says that:

"The US alliance is a staple of Australian politics. Elements of the social and political elite may resent its inherent inequality, but it's just a fact of life. In an alliance between a country of 20 million and another with 275 million that happens to be the most militarily powerful and socially influential nation on earth, the big guy has the last word. Australians instinctively understand this and are prepared to trade off an element of independence for the ultimate insurance the alliance provides. As Latham has found, any mainstream political leader who jeopardises this pays a price."

It is over-the-top rhetoric to say that it is tantamount to political suicide for Labor to thumb its nose at the world's sole superpower.' What is up with the Hywood fellow? Why should the ALP rollover and sign up to the son of star wars?

Should there not be a focus on the Asia-Pacific region and the possibility of an arms race there from Australia's national interest? What possible reason do we have for facilitating an arms race in our region?

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July 8, 2004

it takes a blackout to see the light

John Howard is in Adelaide for three days. An interview with Gushing Cordeaux. This is Howard's second visit to South Australia. It is an election battleground. I would say that Hindmarsh has been lost. Howard is hanging onto Adelaide. I don't know about Makim. It is unknown territory for me.

Whilst in SA the PM is delivering a big vision speech--what was once called a headland speech back in 1996. You know, they're the ones that outline the government's policy goals for the next three years. They outline general themes and plans without saying anything specific. The detail---- how you actually get the water for the River Murray-- comes latter.

This particular speech is entitled Getting the Big Things Right: Goals and Responsibilities in a Fourth Term. What does it say?

The goals will include Australia becoming an enterprise-oriented nation, a fair and decent society and a sustainable continent. Australia will only reach its full potential with an enterprise culture � a culture that encourages and rewards hard work, ambition and calculated risk-taking. A fair and decent society would reconcile a desire for personal freedom with the need for social belonging and order. A sustainable continent is a continent where our prosperity and development does not come at the expense of our environment.

What underpins, and enables, this vision of a better world for all Australians are the twin pillars of economic strength and national security. These two responsibilities allow us to reach our other goals.

Reading this good feeling vibe I kept wondering how the creation of the national electricity market fitted into the vision. Is this an example of sustainable continent where our prosperity and development does not come at the expense of our environment?

The answer has to be no. The electricity reform (privatisation and deregulation) of the 1990s was all about replacing regulations that protect the public and the environment with rules that ensure the smooth and efficient running of the market and the electricity system. These reforms diminish public ownership and control and increase private ownership and control; they shift subsidies away from rural consumers and households to big business; and they shift the burden of paying for non-commercial objectives (equity and sustainability) from business to general taxpayers.

The electricity reforms were less about cutting prices, become more efficient and maintaining the same level of service as the lobbyists maintained. The reforms are more about energy companies making big profits from increasing prices. Moreover, these profits are increasingly being made by using old, polluting, coal-fired power plants in the eastern states; by relying more on more on dirty bown coal in Victoria to generate electricity; and by using the competitive market to foster the uptake of renewable energy.

Using the national electricity market to judge how serious the PM is to sustainable continent is not being unfair. The PM mentions his energy White Paper. This, he says, offers a strategy that retains Australia�s competitive advantage in energy but also takes action to address greenhouse emissions and aloows Adelaide to play a part in initiatives like a Solar Cities trials. He claims that both these develop a smarter energy scenario for the future.

Not really John. It's spin and gloss to cover up your protection of, and subsidies for, the coal and energy-intensive industries. Just another strategy to shore your base.

Has it got the big things right? Well, too much is left unsaid. And how do those common values of the nation, which bind us together as one people, fit with us in SA being taken for a ride over the creation of a national electricity market.
CS over at Backpages is not so polite.

9 July
More gushing interviews with Howard by Adelaide radio. This time it is a fawning Leon Byner. Yawn. However, it was a lot tougher with Mathew Abraham on the ABC.

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June 27, 2004

living with the squeeze

This report by Glenn Milne captures the squeeze the ALP is currently finding itself in. Milne is addressing the issue of clear felling of Tasmania's old growth native forests in a corporatist state. He writes:

"So there we have it. Garrett is recruited to the ALP to galvanise the Green vote in favour of Labor, particularly by way of preferences. But privately Latham assures the loggers [in Tasmania] there'll be no change in policy to accommodate Garrett. In other words, Garrett is just window dressing.

Garrett and Green voters thinking about opting for Labor should study Latham's published words carefully. When he walked with Brown through the Tasmanian forests, Latham left no doubt that jobs should not and would not be lost. There was no reason to tamper with current Regional Forests Agreements, he said. Nor was there any reason to cease all old growth logging; that would end the arts and the crafts industries."

Latham is not even interested in retraining the forestry workers to work in the growing tourist industry. Latham is not even talking about a change in forestry practices in Tasmania.

Bob Brown's position is one of an immediate halt to all logging, not just clear felling, in 240,000ha of the most sensitive Tasmanian forests in the Styx Valley and the Tarkine and Blue Tier forests. Rightly so.

With Brian Harradine announcing his retirement the way is opened up for the Australian Greens to capture his seat. I hope they do.

It is the only way to destablize the corporatist state run by the ALP in Tasmania.

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June 25, 2004

Meanwhile....

While federal Parliament frothed and bubbled all week to clear the legislative decks for the forthcoming election, people around the nation noticed other things:

Leunig

Is it about values?

The politics and the values are connected though. Here is a quote from Don Watson's book, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, which I read on the road. I find the quote rather appropriate to the events of last week:

"People talk about the 'political landscape', but it changes too quickly and unpredictably to be a landscape. Every time you look it was different. An event beyond the horizon, or too deep to comprehend, changed the mood from benign to beligerent in a flash. You would look back on a week or a month and wonder where the change began, but there was no saying. The experts would say they saw it coming but they had to say it if they were to remain experts.The truth was no-one really knew. "

I reckon the big ALP backflip on the PBS was one of those events that changed the political mood or the vibe. The ALP is being belted in the House of Representatives this week and Latham is now represented as a clown doing stunts by cartoonists.

My judgement is that the PBS backflip is a defining moment in the election campaign. It is the moment we can point to when the tide stopped flowing out from the Howard Government and started to flow out on the ALP. The latter's latter's political optimism drained away as it was seen to be turning its back on social justice in favour of accepting the inequality of the free market.

Watson finishes the quote by going on to say:

"It was not a landscape so much as a seascape. Politics was like the sea, though it also looked very like one of those television weather charts that show fronts swirling across the continent at a million times their real speed."

That was certainly was the case for the Keating Government. They were never able to include people into their big picture.

Does the current ALP see the current bad weather coming towards them? The front of swirling bad weather is on the way. You can feel it in your bones.

26 June
Shaun Carney concurs with the above account of the fallout from the ALP's PBS reversal. He says:

"Without doubt, the decision by Labor to drop its opposition to the Government's proposed increase in prices for medications has hurt the ALP. Latham will have lost support, not just among those on low incomes who will be most affected by the rises, but among those who are looking to Labor to chart a different policy course from the Coalition."

Is this the first sign of weakness from the ALP? Or a clever tactical move to find a cool billion?

June 27
Michelle Grattan, in her column in The Age says that "Latham may still be on the path to victory but it doesn't seem the almost inevitable trajectory that it did for a while. His vulnerabilities are increasingly exposed." She identifies some of them:

"The "money" argument, about saving and spending, is getting messy. Managing the release of major policies is tricky. His "alliance" credentials, poor already, have become entwined with the FTA argument...And does the pharmaceutical benefits turnaround mean people can't rely on Labor's word? In dramatically changing its stance on the PBS charges, Labor borrowed from its political credibility bank account to pay the insurance premium on its economic credentials."

The values rather than the policies approach is undercut by the PBS backflip.

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June 8, 2004

political celebrity

Is this a marriage made in heaven? Or one that will end in tears?

Moir

It's a spot on the front bench (a minister even) in return for having the opportunity to make a political difference. Will Garrett make a difference?

I cannot see it myself. I cannot see Garrett delivering on renewable energy, saving the River Murray and the end of clear felling of old-growth Tasmanian forests (the Tarkine, the Styx and the Huon and Picton valleys) within the ALP.

Can youGarrett persuading the ALP to lose go green and seats in Tasmania?

The power of the factions will overwhelm the environmental passion. After all Kingsford Smith is a traditional NSW Right seat in their heartland, yet it is being given to a greenie who has little connection to the politics of Right faction. That cannot please the factional heavies of the NSW Right. They expect you to do you time and kiss the feet of the boss if you want to become their hack.

Garrett as an independent voice in the ALP? That would be a rare exception from what I've seen in Canberra. Something has to give. After all Garrett is just another voice in a Labor caucas.

Some comments by Susan Brown. More comments over at Backpages. This a celebrity story. The danger in celebrity stories is that they can become a form of entertainment. Is this the new postmodern ALP?

June 9

Whilst on the road in the Riverland I kept on catching bites of news on the radio and television. The rank and file more or less imploded. The Garrett story was everywhere. It was abuzzing on talkback. It was more low key amongst the Press gallery. Apart from Alan Ramsay and Barry Cohen who says that "Garrett has nothing to offer Labor."

June 10
Tim Blair goes on and on about the issue. It is good entertainment. So is this piece by Greg Sheridan.

On the other hand, I always took Garrett to be an ALP type, given the way the ACF runs its line that Australia's environmental problems will be sorted once the ALP regains the Treasury Benches. That means a Latham-style ALP will sort out Australia's environmental problems? Who's fooling whom?

It is more likely that Garrett will trim his sails to fit in with the ALP. Garret admitted he would have to moderate some of his earlier views on a range of issues, such as the US spy base at Pine Gap, after becoming a Labor Party member.

"I think it's really a recognition that the whole strategic environment has changed. I'm still as concerned about nuclear weapons as I ever was and I will raise those issues really strongly within the caucus. In the age of terrorism I think (Pine Gap) is playing a really important function in terms of eavesdropping and checking out what terrorists are doing."

I wonder how he will moderate his views on the saving the River Murray? Moderate them he will.

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May 30, 2004

Labor Dreaming

The tide keeps flowing out on the Howard Government. Some are carried away:

Rowe

True, it now looks possible that the Howard Government can be defeated. The budget bounce was not achieved as was expected. (A delayed bounce?) We even have a pollster showing the results for a 2%, 4% and 6% swing to the ALP. It's 1996 in reverse says Hillary Bray. Why, you can even hear the death rattle says Crikey. Laura Tingle in the Australian Financial Review says that the "government doesn't just fear it is going to lose the election, it knows it."

I do not buy this story. It's mostly Labor spin, wishfulfillment and lazy journalism. What we have is a contest. My guess, that it would still be very tight in the marginal seats, is confirmed by private Liberal and Labour polling. The marginals are all that matters. We have little information about what is happening there. The marginals are quite different in character.

For instance, in Adelaide the conservative lower to middleclass electorate of Makin with its northern biblebelt is very very different to the innercity seat of Adelaide, where many gay couples live. Hence they require different policies on different issues, which is why Trish Worth has broken with Howard's conservate understanding of marriage and his attempts to ban same-sex marriages. Since Trish Worth could well lose her seat she had to protest.

In the political chessgame being played, the recent move is the postponement of the pencilled-in election date of August 7th (pushed to October?). With the bad image of Iraq now really hurting the Howard Government's soft underbelly, it will be forced to spend some of the $2.4 billion left in its war chest to gain some traction. It has to paint itself green to look more progressive and to tactically counter "Latham's" energy and environment speech late last week to secure the much-needed Green preferences and establish a left wedge.

So we can expect more leaks on the money Howard will spend on the environment to stop the drift. Howard has singled out the environment as a maintstream issue in Australian politics. He knows that he needs to sort out the vexed issues of environmental flows; water rights; compensation for reduction in the clawback of the overallocation of water (especially in NSW); and finding a truckload of money to pay for it all. And he confronts a constituency of famers (e.g., Murray Irrigation Ltd) who refuse to take responsibility for any risk for any reductions in water allocations in the future.

And the ALP? What I saw last week in the House of Representatives was a tightening up on the front bench. A visible shrinking. They are instinctively doing their small target routine once again. Latham's speech did not talk about the money ($1.5-2 billion) for the 1500 gigalitres needed to restore the Murray-Darling Basin to reasonable ecological health. The ALP right still reckon that green policies represent a disaster for the economy, mean lost jobs and send a bad message to business. It has yet to adopt a policy of stopping the logging of old growth native forests and compensating/retraining those put out of work. The ALP plan to phase out the clear felling of old-growth forests by 2010 won't please Bob Brown. The forests will have gone by 2010.

From what I saw last week nothing much is happening in Canberra. Where were the searching questions on Mitsubishi? On renewable energy? The ALP reckon that with the Howard Government in freefall they can win the election, if they just hang on, stay together and talk in unison from the same script.

Bollocks. Maybe Howard never had a plan B for the post-budget politics in his draw. But there are many tactical moves in the political chess game still to play.

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May 18, 2004

post-budget blues

I haven't really been following the screeds of commentary on the Costello budget. However, it does appear that this account still holds.

Alan Moir

Australians say thankyou for the tax cuts and the family payments. They will help us out for the past price increases and forwhen interest rate rises start to bite on the mortgage repayments. Then they act as citizens and ask: where is the money for the much needed improvement in health and education services?

Their judgement is: the money is in the kitty. It is time to spend. So why was it not spent on where it was needed most, and for the good of the nation?

The ALP people are starting to rub their hands. Their step is lighter. Their hearts are singing, and they are smiling as autumn slides into winter. They have a bounce in their comportment. They smile and say quietly amongst themselves, "it's looking good for August 7."

The euphoria should be tempered. The policy debate is not being engaged in any serious way. It is all short-term thinking about how to present the best possible package to win over the electorate. The focus of the party strategists is on short-term outcomes not serious reform that addresses long-term policy issues: environment; infrastructure renewal; a better tax system and aged care.

An opportunity squandered, you could say. What was delivered was a strategy based on an an easy ticket to power with a few weeks of campaigning centred on a quick budget bounce in the key marginal seats in outer Brisbane and western Sydney.

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May 3, 2004

the tide keeps flowing out

This report by Glenn Milne is interesting in the light of the Howard Government's strategy to spend big time to retain its marginal seats.

Milne has been on the road with the Mark Latham caravan attending oldstyle public meetings for three days. What has he learned? He says that:

"The most striking thing about these meetings was the dis-connect between what the media and politicians see as the national political agenda and the concerns expressed in these windy public halls."

At the time the media ws concerned with the war in Iraq, national security and media political links. Milne says that is not what the people attending the meetings wanted to talk about. They wanted to talk about domestic issues:

... 'and they included the corrosive insecurity of modern life and its effect on the coming generation, the poor health of indigenous Australians, deceit and honesty in government, the GST, increases in fire levies, mental health services, wages safety nets, water storage, Telstra, public education, nursing homes, regional roads and the need for services rather than tax cuts.

These are the preoccupations of ordinary folk. And it was clear from these meetings they did not think Howard was talking much about them. Latham, by contrast, is getting marks for simply being there to hear what one man called these people's "cries for help".'

This indicates that there is a quiet process of de-linking happening between the conservative Howard Government and the battlers.

I cannot see the Costello budget addressing these issues directly, since it will be more focused on tax cuts than providing for well-funded health and education services. The Howard Government is committed to undercutting the legs of social democracy by creating a private health and educational system. The favour the solution supported by business and free-marketeers: creating a market to get private businesses to a provide health and education services and allow them to make a good profit. Yet the public don't want privatised health care.

Milne says those three days on the road gave him a chance to sniff the breeze. He says that "it didn't smell good for the Government."

Another dot in the political landscape. We can start linking up the dots. The political tide is flowing away from the Howard's shoreline.

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March 10, 2004

bad blood

Politics should be about policies not leadership atmospherics. yet is often about leadership--eg., Simon Crean last year and now John Howard. Behind that shift lies the anti-government trend evident in the opinion polls since Mark Latham's replaced Simon Crean as the leader of the ALP.

The media froths and bubbles about leadership tensions in the Liberal Party from chance remarks, the story is off and running, the commentators have their say the story has legs and the Government takes a hit.

Interesting how it works, isn't it. At one level it is a nothing story since Costello just does not have the numbers. At another level it's about the bad blood sitting behind the surface. One moment it's lying beneath the surface hidden from view; the next minute it is the surface, though only for a moment or so.

Bad blood. It's one of the poisons of politics. It destroyed the political credibility of the Australian Democrats.

The leadership tussle is a little example that shows just how much politics is still about people, power and relationships:ie. who is to be top dog.

So politics is not just not about manipulating the media to market the message that the (whatever) party is on the job, on course, and going in the right direction. It's also about bad blood.

Nor should we forget that poisons just keep on working away. Eventually radical surgery is required to repair the dysfunctionality. The question is :'How do you prevent the dysfunctionality'?

Update
Laurie Oaks in The Bulletin says that the latest media round of leadership excitement has little to do with anything Costello said or did not say and everything to do with Howard's changed situation. There is a sense of drift. He puts it this way: "Liberal MPs want Howard to pick up the ball and run with it but he seems to have forgotten how."

One way to prevent the political horrors is aggressive strikes at the enemy. Peter Hartcher decribes the strategy thus:

"Howard has given us a demonstration of his emerging strategy for holding power. The dominant behaviour is aggression - aggression in policy and in politics.
Howard and his Government have taken the initiative on two of the biggest areas of national policy, education and health, and challenged Latham's sincerity on values, specifically his concern over the so-called crisis of masculinity. Howard has launched these initiatives in a staccato that put the Government on the attack on three fronts and put the Opposition onto the defensive.
Within the dominant impulse to aggression is a more subtle plan. Howard's emerging plan is this: to accentuate the policy areas where the Government is perceived as strong, and to neutralise the areas where Labor is perceived to be strong."

The response by the ALP? Julia Gillard's immediate reply to the MedicarePlus package played with the politics of fear. Despite around $2.9 billion being spent on public health familes are going to be worse off. Most of the extra money will be taken you in administration costs. The subtext was that the public health system, which the working class had build for the last 50 years, will be destroyed. That is the politics of fear.

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March 4, 2004

So true

Still on the road.

This article by Carmen Lawrence on political lobbyists is good. So many spend the day knocking on the doors of our federal parliamentarians seeking to persuade our legislators.

It's what I noticed when I recently visited Canberra:---Parliament House was crawling with lobbyist bearing the tag 'unaccompanied visitors'. I saw a number of politicians walking the corridors whose faces I recognized from the television. But they were far out numbered by the lobbyists.

They were everywhere in the corridors.

I chatted with a couple of lobbyists in the corridors----well as stood waiting in the queue for a coffee at Aussies. They said they were basically in Canberra for the day doing the rounds of the pollies. It was a whole day devoted to persuasion.

As Carmen says, they are the hidden persuadors.

Many have deep pockets. Just look at what they were able to achieve around renewable energy and ethanol: large sums of taxpayer money were given to prop up domestic producers, such as Manildra. The alternative fuels regime puts the interests of Manildra - Australia's near-monopoly ethanol producer and major Liberal Party donor - ahead of other ethanol producers and the interests of a sustainable biofuels sector.

What we have is crony capitalism, Australian style.

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March 3, 2004

Federal election

Still on the road.

I heard from the news that the economy is booming. Record profitability and strong economic growth due to prudent economic management, says Peter Costello, the Federal Treasurer.

And the pressures on the sound economic management and budget surpluses?National security and Senate obstructionism says Costello. How about spending up big?

This article highlights the Howard Government's election strategy. A war chest that will be used to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on aged care, defence and health in an election-year spending blitz. The recent recepients of governmental largesse were the catholic schools, veterans and the sugar industry.

Then we have MedicarePlus. That will cost.

And are they spending the surplus. I heard a figure of around $3.5 billion having been spent so far. But I cannot confirm it.

What it means is that there will not be much surplus left over to spend and that Peter Costello does not control the purse strings.

On another note:

Alan Moir

It is back to normal politics. The Howard Government spending big to neutralize political problems.

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February 26, 2004

election issues

John Quiggin's article in today's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 26 02 04 p.70)) builds on this post in his weblog. He says that the forthcoming federal election (held in October) will probably be fought on domestic issues:

"Barring a big foreign-policy shock the question dominating the 2004 election will be whether any budget surplus accruing to the government should be returned in the forms of tax cuts or as higher spending on services such as health and education (there's a third option---keeping the surplus and paying off debt---but neither party seems likely to propose this)."

That is the right judgement at this stage about the sort of domestic issues.

The public strongly support spending on health and education according to the recent Newspoll survey and the surveys undertaken by Senator Meg Lees in SA. (See the SPENDING THE BUDGET SURPLUS post on her weblog).

These findings can only help to reinvigorate the ALP in its battle to get its hand on the levers of power. Hence the need for the Coalition to bring the poltical battle back to the economy.

But the implication is broader than this electoral bun fight. The findings suggest that there is more to policy life than the dry economics of balanced budgets, low interest rates, tax reform, competition policy and the efficient allocation of scarce resources.

The Australian ignores the Newspoll and argues in favour of using the budget surplus to fund tax cuts. By ignoring public opinion it is running a political campaign under the slogan of 'too much tax.' What is the politics here? Is the policy one of a flat tax of 30%? Is it a policy of stopping Australia from slipping into a welfare-state syndrome and preventing bludgers climbing aboard the welfare gravy train? Is it a policy of the government wastes money? Is the bogey looming welfare costs? Its about economics--not health or education. Murdock's Australian is fighting on behalf of Howard.

Sitting behind the health issue sits aged care, the aging of society and the rising costs of aged care.

Peter Costello's suggestion is to encourage older Australians to work part time, whilst being able to draw on their superannuation benefits. Sensible. But hardly the big fix for ageing.

Many older Australians (both blue and white collar) have been thrown on the scrap heap, and they find it very difficult to retrain and then obtain another job. You can only work on if you have, or can find a job. There's the little problem of ageism there. (Older people are unemployable).

Oh, another thing. Is there not a huge gap between what we save and what we need for retirement? More money is needed. That we workers need to save more is what Costello seems to be saying here.

But are not we taxed on money into superannuation, taxed on the money as it accummulates and taxed on the money when it goes out?

So the Costello message is that we citizens need to work longer and save more. That's a tough message when we are 64.

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February 23, 2004

populism divided

I think that this account of the recent shift in national politics by Robert Manne is roughly right.

Manne says that over the past fortnight the atmosphere of Australian party politics has experienced significant change. One chapter was closed; a new one opened up.

The chapter that has closed is John Howard's unchallengeable ascendancy through the use of the populist sword. This sword was a conservative, populist cultural rollback campaign - concerning multiculturalism, Mabo, the republic, reconciliation and, finally, refugees. As a conservative populist, Howard focuses on the threat of national disintegration, social cohesion and on questions of ethnicity or race. He used the sword by making direct contact with the people through almost daily appearances on mass-audience commercial radio. He avoided the the Canberra Press gallery. Howard saw off both One Nation and the ALP

Things change. The chapter that has been opened up is Mark Latham's capacity to answer the challenge of Howard's new populist age. Latham he is capable of making vivid, direct connection with the public through his plain speaking and effective use of the radio. Latham is also capable of identifying the kind of populist issue that can destabilise his political opponents.

As Manne points out this is a Laborist kind of populism; a social democratic populism, with its traditional hostility to abuses of privilege and undeserved wealth, on banks, the big end of town and parliamentary rorts.

Thus we have a conflict between these two kinds of populism. What has happened to neo-liberalism of the technocratic economists with their obsession with management and control to create a deregulated market society?

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February 13, 2004

National politics: the ground is changing

I arrived back in Adelaide this morning. A quick glance at the morning papers whilst having coffee at the airport indicates that the Canberra Press Gallery has summed up the week of political conflict in Canberra. Their judgement is that the political ground has shifted from under the Coalition.

The best account is given by Laura Tingle in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required; 13 02 04, p. 7) She says that John Howard lost control of the national political agenda during the Parliamentary week. He was wrong footed by Latham over politician's superannuation; is having to mix it with school kids rather than military personnel; was not able to control the political agenda with the overselling of the Free Trade Agreement; and had his authority in the partyroom challenged by coalition backbenchers over his cave in on politician's super.

So much for the Coalition's macho promises to cut the political ground from under Mark Latham's feet by wounding him; and then enjoy watching him slowly bled.

It didn't happpen. It was the Coalition who looked blood splattered by the end of the week. It's distraction and spoiler tactics had backfired.

Behind the froth and bubble of the parliamentary conflict the reaction to the free trade agreement with the US continues to swirl and churn. And for good reason:

Alan Moir

The hype does not accord with reality. Have a look at this fact sheet published by the US Trade Representative. Australian sovereignty is reduced in areas such as the PBS, Australian content in the media, the vetting of US corporate takeovers, government procurement, quarantine etc as the price for access to US markets.

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February 9, 2004

blow torches and human bellies

Federal Parliament starts tomorrow after the summer break. Just a few days of heat and action to help boost the election campaign that is now rolling along.

The Canberra Press Galley must be rubbing their hands with glee with the return of Parliament. Fireworks have been promised. The Liberal Party is promising to finish Latham's honeymoon with a king hit from an all out government attack. Latham will be a moving target. So the Press Gallery will have plenty of copy as they analyze the political game that wil be played out around free trade.

There is some important legislation due to be introduced----most notably Tony Abbott's Medicare reform package that is all about providing a bit of safety net for the deserving poor. Abbott is going to make a last-ditch effort to get the government's Medicare safety-net legislation through the Senate after negotiations with the Australian Democrats broke down. His credibility hangs on getting a win.

It is not just about doctors. Somehow we have forgotten about the allied health care professionals, such as dentists, podiatrists, physiotherapists and dietiticians. Why not us this opportunity to shift away from the doctor/drug model of primary health care? It is a very limited model.

As the Senate picks up from where it left off, Costello is talking about using the budget surplus (projected to be around $3.2 billion) to provide tax cuts to pre-empt the need for increased spending on public services and infrastucture. That move is designed to cut the ground from under the feet of the ALP.

Update
Negotiations are well underway on the Howard Government's Medicare Plus package. It would seem whilst Minister Abbott is denouncing wishlists and ruling out price controls on specialist prices he is giving some ground. The package is slowly being made fairer.

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February 3, 2004

oh my my

Are those freedom loving conservatives who love a sunlight country going sour on John Howard?

Here's the Murdoch variety----one Andrew Bolt:

"THE fog of terror has lifted and John Howard's weakness is again exposed. The Prime Minister seems like an actor who's lost his lines. No wonder he's been urging his ministers to think up ideas for him to discuss....Labor leader Mark Latham, however, says a lot that's colourful, and quoted, even if it's as profound as graffiti. He sells optimism, and uses the word "opportunity'' as often as Howard says "terror''. I don't say Latham has the policies, smarts or appeal to win an election. But I do say Howard looks like a man who's run out of things to say."

Howard is running on empty and he lacks what it takes to be our leader. That's from Bolt. My my.

The spin doctors in Howard's office will not be pleased. Tony O'Leary is probably stunned. Isn't Bolt meant to be welded-on to the spin machine? No doubt O'Leary will dig into his bag of tricks to continue the mix of intimidation and bluster against perceived opponents, and the background briefings and extra access for the more compliant journalists. The resentful Canberra Press Gallery is offside with Howard because he bypasses them and talks to the electoral heartland via talk back radio ( John Laws & Alan Jones) and television (A Current Affair).

Rust never sleeps. Ya gotta remember that distrust and paranoia rules.

Is that just another little sign that the political landscape is changing? A landscape in which the repetition of lines of the imperial Presidency's White House war script is no longer working in Australia as it once did.

Remember that The MAN OF STEEL has admitted that there may be no WMD's in Iraq after all. Blaming the intelligence services for the bad information is not going to do much work in regaining the needed electoral momentum. What has been opened up is the Howard government's use of intelligence (ie., their deceptions and manipulations) to try to justify the Iraq invasion.

Blair can try to use the violation of "journalist standards" by the BBC to blur or conceal the national security state's own deceits. Not so Howard. With its head in the fog of fear and feet in the swamp of deceit, the spin machine of the Australian national security state cannot get very far with relentlessly pounding the line that its lapses in judgment can be pinned on the ABC's alleged lapses in journalistic standards. No doubt, Alexander Downer wil continue to bluff and bluster and look more of the clown

The issue is becoming clear. As Peter Osborne writing in The Spectator says that:

" There are three possible explanations for this tragic dereliction. The first is that the WMD did exist, but have not yet been found. Most intelligent judges now rule out that possibility. The second is that they never existed at all and that the intelligence services made an enormous blunder. The third is that intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic yielded to political pressure. The most likely answer is that a combination of the last two were at work."

That means the invasion of Iraq took place for no reason and the Australian people were misled.

So what is John Howard going to do to regain traction?

Try working the fear & law and order couplet in WA. Selling the image of being strong on national security and tough on drugs--the old Man of Steel.

How about a good old fashioned spending spree that buys the swinging voters in marginal electorates: big money to shore up Howard's position?

Underneath that the conservative mesage is plain: national security, a strong economy and social stability. Oh and strong and united families. No reason to take risks or fret about the holes in the welfare state.

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February 2, 2004

Latham: Free economy, strong state

Christopher Scanlon has a piece in The Age that addresses the concerns of the previous post. Given Latham's acceptance of the free market as a good to be fostered extended and encouraged, how does he deal with the political fallout from the bads (social dislocation) flowing from the normal workings of a deregulated market?

Chris suggests that Latham works in terms of Margaret Thatcher's free economy/strong state mode of governance. A strong state does not just refer to the national security state. It has a domestic dimension. With Thatcher it meant the following strategy of governance:

"As the government withdrew from regulating the market, it took an increasingly interventionist role in policing social life. This was usually done under the banner of protecting family values, and instituting draconian law and order policies, that were aimed particularly at those deemed surplus to the immediate requirements of the market (the young and unemployed, for example), and blaming the poor and infirm not only for their own plight, but for larger social ills as well. Increasing social surveillance and management were the order of the day."

Chris, like myself, detects socially authoritarian overtones to Latham's plan for a new portfolio of community relations to be charged with developing policies to combat loneliness, work stress and community breakdown. Social authoritarianism is the political term for the hard edge that I drew attention to in the previous post.

After rightly describing John Howard's mode of governing society as a socially authoritarian one, Chris says this mode is a consequence of neo-liberalism:

"Since nothing is to be permitted to impact on the free running of the economy, a stronger state is required to hold society together. If this means draconian and heavy-handed programs aimed at containing those who are no longer necessary to the economy, then so be it."

Howard's social authoritarian way of deal with those rejected from the free market is wrapped up in a package of mutual obligation, family values, populism and one nation conservatism. This cast Howard in the Thatcher mould.

And Latham? He thinks in terms of the duality of benign market and malign bureaucracy. Hence all the Third Way stuff about community responsibility, social capital and social entrepreneurship to deal with society. Will this duality soften Latham's latent social authoritarianism?

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February 1, 2004

a changing political landscape

There is certainly a lot of fuss currently being made by the Canberra Press Gallery about the new look of the federal ALP. The ALP spin doctors must be over the moon at all the media coverage they are getting from their slick marketing. Michelle Grattan calls it "bathing in glowing media attention."

The ALP factions and union apparatchiks are singing the song of unity together. It's all hope and warm fuzzy feelings in the ALP these days, even amongst the factional knuckleheads. And the fired-up electoral strategists are thinking up ways to keep the ALP's political momentum going. They reckon they've a chance to capture the Treasury benches.

How things can turn around in politics. And so quickly. What was happened yesterday has been forgotten. As Grattan reminds us about Latham, in case we have forgotten:

"Less than three years ago, this man was in self-imposed exile, regarded by some colleagues as maverick or mad. Less than three months ago, he was the shadow treasurer his frontbench critics thought had been bested by Peter Costello. Now he's the Great Chance, even if Labor will need quite a few four-leaf clovers to turn its new Sensation into lasting salvation."

Salvation? That's religious imagery. Well, the ALP had been cast into the political wilderness by John Howard.

I have no idea how much the political landscape is changing, now that the ALP is telling a coherent story, or has a new political narrative about making good through hard work, individual responsibility and education. It has changed though, now that parents reading books to their kids each day is a matter of state.

What I do tacitly know is that there is a hard neo-liberal edge behind all the ALP 's froth and bubble:

John Wright

Adele Horn has seen the hardness in the new face of the ALP right.

The (working) poor have to whippped into shape in the new order of the global market. Remade, so their subjectivities are market ones. This would give them the drive they need to leave the impoverished world of the working class by climbing the ladder of opportunity.

Gregory Hywood redescribes the hardness as the consequences of living in a deregulated, global market economy. The ALP has devise economic policies for living in the global market. However, Hywood has little to say about the losers from economic change apart from a brief gesture to mutual obligation as a way to ensure that society is held together.

Chris over at Backpages contests the neo-liberal commentary. He rightly argues against the neo-liberal commentators pointing the finger at Latham's economic policy. He says that embracing the free market is not where the votes are for the ALP to regain power. As he points out, public sentiment in Australia has always been critical of the wholehearted embrace of the free market and support forms of protection from the chilly economic winds.

That position is primarily because citizens tacitly understand the big fallout of free market reform on their everyday lives and communities. Hence Howard's embrace of one nation conservatism that was presented in the language of populism of the forgotten people. Populism was Howard's way of managing the political fallout from the economic reforms of the 1980s. He understood that the political managers had not handled the political fallout of the economic reforms very well.

Chris is right. We can ignore the free market neo-liberal commentaters in the context of a federal election.

What Chris does not address is Latham's neo-liberalism or the crude market populism that Latham has constructed to deal with the political fallout. What he sees outside the ALP in the neoliberal commentators I see inside the ALP. How will the ALP handle the political fallout from the negative consequences of the free market reforms?

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January 30, 2004

ALP Conference

I see that Chris over at Back Pages is all emotional from the energy and froth and bubble of the 2004 ALP conference being held in Sydney town. Chris is a political junkie. But it makes a welcome break from the dreariness of lecturing.

For all the recent talk of internal democracy, the conference is more a ritual celebration by the party for the party: a party still controlled by the factions of machine politics run by machine men who think like machines. The Conference is a ritual celebration of how wonderful the ALP is; its activities are presented by publicists to seduce the Canberra Press gallery; and it fills the media flows with images of the brave new leader.

Most of what happens inside the Conference is closed to ordinary citizens.
(photo by Pat Scala)

What is public is Latham's opening speech, the attempts by the Howard Government to prevent a resurgent ALP from gaining too much traction, and Bob Brown's over-the-top enthusiasms for Latham. The political centre is Latham. The Press gallery has been hooked.

I read the speech yesterday, along with the Crikey's leaking of the draft (much ado about nothing) and Costello's interpretation of the draft to mean that the ALP's real agenda is to raise interest rates, hike taxes and increase the budget deficit (joke). Howard's punches keeping missing their target.

The buzz words of Latham's 'Opportunity for All' speech include big country, propersity with a purpose, rungs on the ladders of opportunity, rebuilding community, national security and grassroots democracy. The series of oneliners speech is looks thin on paper but it comes across well when delivered, and the oneliners look good on the grabs of television.

It looked like an election launch.

The theme and dream being sold is aspirational, suburban working class boy making good. Making good is the good life.

How does government enable this dream to be achieved?

Through social mobility from Australians climbing the ladder of opportunity. The opportunities are opened up a prosperous economy achieved through competition and productivity. The market-based economy is the engine of growth, and Labor is the champion of economic reform. The free market is what sits behind the speech to the party faithful.

Management of the economy is through tax cuts, small government and budget surpluses.

It is a policy that leaves the cracks in a welfare system that was designed to alleviate poverty and despair.

The holes in the welfare stem are to be covered by responsibility, rebuilding community, social capital and governments working with the voluntary sector. Latham's Third Way is highly critical of the heavy hand of the state.

Yet I detect a heavy hand behind the values community talk in dealing with the poor. They need to be coerced and disciplined with a big stick to reenter the market.

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January 18, 2004

rolling into elections

Mark Latham, it seems, is in constant campaign mode even though he is on his political honeymoon. He visited Adelaide last week on the campaign trail, before shooting up to Queensland to join the Beattie election bandwagon currently rolling along with great fanfare.

David Rowe

In Adelaide Latham did not say much of substance, even though Federal Labor has all but lost South Australia to the Coalition. (It only holds 3 of the eleven seats from memory, even though there is a state Labor Government.) When in town Latham was strong on pressing the flesh, reading stories to kids at the beach and low on public policy. The visit was the time when the first Adelaide Darwin freight train rolled out of Adelaide to cross the continent with much hoopla about the steel Snowy, flag waving, celebrations and talk about federal history. It's real job is to transport goods.

Meanwhile, the economic rationalists in the eastern states muttered darkly into their expresso's about efficiency, financial return, shutting nowhere (South Australia and the Northern Territory) down and allowing the market to shift the lost populations to Sydney and Melbourne. They have no conception of place.

Latham's political message was that the ALP still stands for nation-building. (There was no sign of the former Latham as the foul-mouthed hothead and little sign of the man from the western suburbs of Sydney). This was the new measured Latham.

So what did the reinvented Latham say in Adelaide? He will protect the ailing River Murray; protect jobs in the car industry by reviewing the cuts to car tariffs; scrap the nuclear power dump; intervene to ensure more competition in the electricity market to reduce power bills in South Australia; and encourage migrants to settle in South Australia to boost the state's population and economic growth. This was specifically tailored to SA.

The visit got headlines in the local Murdoch rag (The Advertiser). There was nothing about higher education, public health sustainable and liveable cities or developing a renewable energy industry.

Oh, there was the usual national policy on slashing federal funding to rich private schools and urging state government to reduce stamp duty on homes and their reliance on poker machine taxes.

Hardly enough to win the three marginal seats up for grabs in SA. Nothing about how the Murray is going to get the 1500 gigalitres promised; or how competition will reduce power prices. It's still all tailored promises on the never never. Nothing in what Latham said shows that the ALP will be better at practically managing the instruments of governance.

Nor can I see the Rann Labor Government generating lots of positive spillover for Latham and so boost federal Labor's prospects through winning over the middle ground for the election expected in October. The state government does not show that the federal ALP is morally deserving of government--- it continues to fudge gvernance. And the Federal ALP is still vague on the policy ends to which the instruments of governance are orientated.

Maybe Queensland will play that crucial traction role that Latham needs through deploying its old strategy of 'blame Canberra for all our problems' game. The important political background is Queensland, not South Australia. The marginal seats in the south west of Queensland matter more than those in Adelaide, if the ALP is to win Government in its own right.

But I know little about the south east corner of Queensland apart from them being populated by retirees with conservative social values. Does conservative social values + economic development = the Beattie ALP?

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December 30, 2003

wish fulfilment or reality

Yes, I know that its Xmas and lots of silly things get said. But it does seem that the conservatives kinda like a Latham-led ALP gaining control of the Treasury Benches.

Why so?

Because they will continue with the economic reform in the face of reform fatique. Here is John Hyde from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) writing in The Australian:

"Latham could position Labor as a party of economic responsibility and reform by insisting that it will do even some of the things that established wisdom tells it that it should do but which for political advantage is not done. He could champion fiscal discipline, trade policy, if he's game labour market reform, privatisation and marketisation of service delivery, especially by the states, deregulation of law and medicine, the better targeting of welfare and, embracing all, the elimination of governmental favouritism. The present profligate Government offers him an easy target.
Australia has a lot at stake in the competence and persistence with which Latham proceeds. Even if he fails to convert Labor, his arguments should cause the existing Government, and maybe a future Labor government, to govern better than it otherwise would, even than it could."

What would then ditinquish the ALP from the Howard Government apart from economic responsibility versus profligate?

Latham has to control the lefties no doubt. That won't be too hard as the Right nearly controls the ALP organizational wing now. Latham's job, acording to Hyde, is to make the ALP into a hardline neo-liberal Party that loves a strong state. You know one the one loved by the scaremongering, paranoic conservatives: a big state that flexes a bit of muscle on behalf of the Americans.

Outdoing Howard is hardly a good strategy for the ALP to regain power is it?

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December 27, 2003

Who do you trust?

I see that The Australian is running a big story on the very decentralized The Australian Greens courtesy of Jamie Walker. (no link) Even with a regulation half-Senate election in the second half of next year, I presume that the prospect of 2-3 extra Green Senators in the Senate at the expense of the Australian Democrats does not appeal to the decidely conservative+neo-liberal Australian.

Unlike me, the Murdoch-owned Australian does not like the prospect of the Greens as a third force in Australian politics. Not one little bit. Hence the Green bashing that is starting to appear in the newspaper.

Walker's story builds on this one. The piece is largely descriptive in the style of informative objective journalism: a bit of history, the Greens are decentralized with little in the way of national organization; are anti-globalization;they saw off the attempt by the Trotskyites and Socialist Workers Party to take them over. I sort of 'get to know the Australian Greens.'

However, the piece contains a political message about the role likely to be played by the Greens in the Senate. How would they act? What would they do with their power. Would they negotiate? Would they just say no?

Walker suggests the model of Tasmania from 1989 to 1992 indicates what would happen. That was when the Field Labor Government was in power. What does that indicate? You cannot negotiate with the Greens says a bitter Field, the ex-Labor Premier, even with an Accord in place. I say bitter, because the Field-led ALP then worked with the Liberals to reduce the overall number of seats of the Tasmanian Parliament, in order to reduce the representation of the Greens.

My reading is different. The Tasmanian State ALP is largely beholden to the logging companies. The line is the old one of 'what is good for Gunns is good for Tasmania.' Hence all the talk about resource security for the logging companies and more jobs from woodchipping ever more native forests. You hear nothing about knowledge nation from the blinkered Bacon ALP government and little about fostering change to a value-adding timber industry.

My judgement is that cannot trust the current ALP to deliver on the environment, even if you have an Accord. In the past the federal ALP developed on the Franklin. My fear is when the crunch comes today's ALP will favour economic development at the expense of environmental protection and rehabilitation.

Under a Latham ALP desperate for power, the green touch will be light indeed. It is fair to say that sustainability is not a word in their policy tool kit.

That tool kit consists of a commitment to border protection, national security and "sensible" economic management policies. Sensible does not mean sustainable or even 'green modernization.' And I have yet to hear Latham speaking in favour of the environment, as opposed to the policy talk about climbing the rungs of the ladder of success.

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December 24, 2003

? over Queensland Greens

I have lifted this from the Crikey.com.au mailout. It is by Greg Barnes, who picks up on an earlier article in The Australian by Jamie Walker. Walker's article was about how Drew Hutton's Queensland Greens were closely tied to the Beattie ALP Government.

'Closely tied' means a question mark hovers over the relationship between the Australian Greens and the ALP.

Greg Barns argues that Drew Hutton's Queensland Greens are the new face of Beattie Labor, as they prepared to help the Beattie Government back into power despite its appalling environmental record. On this interpretation the Greens in Queensland are little more than the fifth faction of the ALP, as Drew Hutton has already offered the ALP the Greens preferences in next year's State and Federal poll. The Greens have a record of this: they directed their preferences to the ALP in 27 out of 31 seats they contested in the 2001 Queensland State Election (including 10 marginal seats) and 110 of the 150 seats they contested (including all 37 marginal seats) at the last Federal Election.

Barnes says that the Beattie Government does not deserve the support of the environment movement as it has failed to keep most of its promises on the environment, including promises made by Federal Leader Kim Beazley at the 2001 election. He says that the Beattie Government has:

..."* dithered on land clearing, resulting in five years of panic clearing by landholders ahead of its long delayed legislation;

* failed to match the $15 million offered by the Federal Government ...for protecting the Great Barrier Reef;

* cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency this year by $10 million (or 4%);

* opposed the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and continued to build coal fired power stations despite their greenhouse impact;

* failed to stop inappropriate coastal developments such as Trinity Inlet in Cairns and Eastpoint in Mackay;

* insisted on building the environmentally destructive Paradise Dam on the Burnett River and failed to increase environmental flows into the Murray-Darling."

I concur with Barnes judgement that this is hardly an environmental record worthy of rewarding with Green preferences, and that in these circumstances a vote for the Greens is, at the end of the day, simply a vote for Beattie Labor!

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December 17, 2003

It's not economics, its ideology

Ross Gittens says it well. The Howard Government is willing to increase spending on defence and tax cuts but says there is no money to spend on bulkbilling or funding public education. Gittens says that the federal Treasurer,

"Peter Costello has made it clear there's another increase in defence spending coming in next year's budget, and his long-promised tax cut will come out of whatever money's left. But how much spending on defence is enough? We have unending debates about spending on Medicare and education, but when it comes to defence, it's all a black box. We're expected to pay up and shut up."

The conservatives in Canberra love a strong state that can flex its military muscle and make the Indonesians uneasy. In doing so they make a fetish of strong leadership.

He then goes through an account of what the current $15.4 billion for the Australian Defence Force gives; what we would get when it is increased to $16.7 billion, to $20.3 billion a year by the end of this decade and $24.9 billion a year. He concludes:

"Don't forget this is a Government that, while being the highest-taxing in our history, is desperately trying to keep the lid on health-care spending, can no longer afford bulk-billing, is spending far less than it should on unis and palming more and more of the cost on to students."

That is what a small state means for neo-liberals. Doing away with the welfare state.

By ideology I mean that the Howard Government is hostile to the universality of the welfare state. So it will squeeze these public institutions of funds to reduce the welfare state to a safety net for the poor. The justification will be that it has no money.

The money is there. So is public support for spending it on health, education and the environment. It is politically dififcult to kill off the welfare state. So it will be ringbarked whilst claiming otherwise.

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December 8, 2003

It's never too late to say goodbye

The news and opinion pages have quietened down after the big splurge on politics inside Canberra last week by the Canberra Press Gallery. All that froth and bubble really was a case of information overload. I turned off the TV, gave up reading the newspapers, did some gardening and read some more Hegel on poverty for light relaxation. It's called thinking time.

I heard that the Australian Democrats are in crisis yet again. Their image becomes ever more tarnished. Are we watching a political party, well-known for its self-destructive tendencies, in a death throes?

Will they quietly fade away?

The Democracts no longer seem capable of playing a constructive role in the Senate other than saying no. The Australian Democrats have lost a lot of respect and credibility as a radical centre. The radical centre would seem to have been occupied, and claimed by, the Latham-led ALP, as the political momentum on the left of the centre increasingly shifts to the Australian Greens.

The Australian Democrats are being left stranded, as the tide rolls out; or they are being squeezed in the middle between the Coalition and the ALP. There is not much wriggle room in the middle. With Howard now beginning to do his softshoe shuffle to retirement under the sign of "generational change", I guess we will have a very different Senate after June 2005 to the one we have now.

I do remember hearing something on the news about Australia signing up to Star Wars. I caught a fraction of a sound bite from some American "expert" saying that missiles would be falling on Australia in the near future, hence the need for Canberra to sign up to the US ballistic global shield. I translated that bit of spin as paranoia that we could well do without.

Who is going to be firing the missiles at us? Pakistan? India? China? North Korea? For what reason? The scenarios sound far fetched.

It's publicity to justify Australia becoming ever more an extension of the US military machine. Going behind the defensive shield is the other side of the Free Trade Agreement. A big picture sits beneath both.

Oh, I did see a shot of that American flag in the ALP caucus room.

Apparently, the US flag was on display alongside the podium - along with TV crews and reporters for a press conference and a courtesy visit that morning by the US Ambassador, Tom Schieffer. The press conference did not include Schieffer. The US flag was mistake it is said. The actions of an eager staffer.

Yet the rhetoric of the Stars and Strips, which was used as a prop, was about wrapping it around a defensive ALP. My my. How the tables turn. A U turn so quick too. Howard really had them spooked.

Is it also the ALP Right speaking about how they love Star Wars? Public obeisance to Washington does appear to turn these birds of prey on.

What can be said about the mistake? Tim Blair reads the messages right, and it gives him great satisfaction.

Latham deserved this introduction to an interview for the grovel. Allan Ramsay makes the right call.

Does that mean the ALP folds under the US pressure for Australia to become part of their Star Wars?

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December 2, 2003

And then there was one

I've have been caught up with things to do with the society of the spectacle for most of the morning.

So I've just just caught the news that has got Canberra excited and in a twizz.

Who won the ballot for the ALP leadership? That was the big drama. Well, it's Mark Latham as Leader of the ALP by one vote. That's the news. The wires are now running hot. The copy is being written fast and furious.

Yawn.

Bomber Beazley never got the numbers and his game is now over. Maybe he'll become the new Foreign/Defence Minister. It's now Mark Latham for PM. The pollsters will get their electoral number machines out to help answer the big question: Will the Tory working class return to the ALP?

Expect more of this though. The new boy is a neo-liberal at heart. For all his street smarts and tough talk he just loves the theorems of neo-classical economics. Just like Paul Keating. Under Latham the primacy of the market has again been embraced.

The Latham imagery is about working people climbing the ladder of success rather than trickle down. His own roots are in impoverished suburbs with decript public housing and dustbowl back gardens and people wanting a better life for themselves. He speaks about the outsiders and the forgotten ones in the suburbs and talks the language of self-enabling strategies that is understood by most suburban Australians. It is not the old language of public welfare, public housing and charity. Latham says:

"I believe in an upwardly mobile society where people can climb the rungs of opportunity to a better life for themselves and their family. I believe in hard work and reward for effort. I believe in a Government that is there to help the people who are doing the right thing - the people who are getting stuck in, doing things the fair dinkum Australian way."

It's aspirational voterland suburban talk. That's the future says Mark. We can get there by taking The Third Way. The Howard Government knocks out the rungs in the ladder, and so places obstacles in the path of those aspiring to a better life. Hence the Coalition is against the fair go.

We are going to hear a lot about the aspirations of those living in the mortagage belt seats of the western Sydney suburbs.

It is with joy in my heart that I can report that Boilermaker Bill over at Crikey.com.au got it all wrong:

"And Latham? Sorry Mark, but recognising you need to tone down the angry pose three days before you want to win a leadership ballot is just leaving it a little too late. No-one believes that your so called voter friendly vernacular has charmed anyone outside an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. You should have learnt from your mentor, Gough Whitlam. He could come across like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and a bookshelf up his backside: but he still won over the punters. Forget Civilising Global Capital - start with Civilising Mark Latham...
....Latham's trouble is that he has played the outsider for so long he's forgotten how to be a team player. Remember back to his semi self imposed exile after the 1998 Election when he claimed that Beazley's office had gutted his election policy. That's the problem in a nutshell: Latham thought it was his policy not Labor's policy. And every idea, every policy since then smacks of being Latham's policy not Labor's policy: nest eggs, tax cuts for the high earners, you name it - it's Latham's not Labor's."

Boilermaker Bill is out of touch with his own party. He's got lots of bile. And he's obssessed with putting the acid on Bob Brown and the Australian Greens.

It is time to return to the habits of everyday life----to take the dogs for a walk in the Adelaide Parklands and then make dinner. The media flows into our homes will be full of commentary about the boy from the suburbs made good but I will try and write a post on Bataille and eroticism.

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November 29, 2003

its not fair but....

There are some good insights from Matt Price writing in today's Australian

"In modern politics, the alternative prime minister must be comfortable and competent tackling and exploiting the electronic media. Yet Crean proved hopeless on television; more wooden than Pinocchio, delivering carefully scripted lines like a reluctant B-grade actor.

On radio, his grating voice was poison. By the end, talkback producers were loathe to invite Crean on air for fear of sparking an exodus of listeners to rival stations. At breakfast time, when the radio audience is at its peak, Crean's often carping, always strident tones threatened to curdle the kiddies' orange juice."

That shows the importance of the media in politics. Crean was filtered out no matter how hard he worked. Filtered out despite the tensions within the Coaliton, the failure of the Howard's Bali/terrorist hand to resonate in the electorate (he was resoundingly booed at the Rugby World Cup for playing it) and the low primary vote for the Coalition.

Crean could not cut through the media filter. He could not manage the public persona so that citizens did not turn off when he spoke to them about the issues that mattered to them. Consequently, his policy pronouncements had little impact and the ALP was seen to be poor on the vision thing. It was unclear what the ALP as a social democratic party stood for.

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October 31, 2003

a defining political moment

I have been thinking about the events of last week associated with the fleeing visit of the imperial presidency who sees the world through a self-enclosed security bubble: 750 security agents and a 24-hour fly-over in Canberra skies of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.

At one level the spectacle was a political stunt organized by John Howard to gain electoral traction as the political ground shifts away from national security to health and education. At another level it was a taxpayer funded private party for John Howard's mates that excluded everyone else from any ongoing dialogue with the Americans. At another level it was the American Secret Service taking over Parliament and excluding the Australian media from documenting the event.

Personally, I think it's a defining political moment. It is symbolized by Brown confronting Bush and so a challnged to the conservative cynicism that comes wrapped in the flag.

And the Parliamentarians knew in their bones that the template of public opinion had shifted underneath all their spin about bad manners, stunts, lack of decorum, boorish behaviour etc etc.
The Parliamentarians knew the significance of the numbers in the polls. Hence their outrage and anger.

They knew that electoral support for the Howard Government was slipping, as socially progressive liberals were leaving a conservative Liberal Party. They were going to the Australian Greens and not to the Australian Labour Party. The hardline stance on issues such as border protection and security policy was not biting like it once did because these political issues were dropping in importance of concern.

They knew that support for Labor (ALP) was slipping and that it was going to the Greens, and not to The Australian Democrats.

They knew that electoral support for the Australian Democrats was slipping and it was going to the Greens. The Demcorats were no longer the socially progressive alternative. They facing the end of their 25 year old historyas a Third Force.

The Greens are now the Party of political protest that had become a powerful third force in Australian politics.

Hence the speech by the Government attack dog, Senator George Brandis. He called Bob Brown an ecofascist. The Australian Greens were engaged in crypto-fascists politics. Brandis drew parallels between the political techniques of the green movement and the Nazi's in that both used the form of democracy as a political cover for their jackboot politics.

Astoundly, Brandis' understanding of German history showed no understanding of the corporatism in fascism, the development of corporatism in Australia, or the way this corporatism is being shaped by the Howard Government.

Why the attack? Because the trajectory of the political shift is one of the Australian Greens controlling the fate of government legislation by possibly holding the balance of power in the Senate. That is of a major concern to the Howard Government. Hence the politics of fear and loathing that is part of a scare campaign. The teeth are barred. It is political ugliness not policy that is the order of the day.

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October 20, 2003

Seaside thoughts

Things are pretty quite down on the southern coast of South Australia apart from the spring winds that blow mighty strong. The news reaches here slowly and most of the spin from Canberra is filtered out by surf and cloud.

Here, amidst the wealth of the pockets of luxury holiday homes along the Victor Harbor-Goolwa coastal strip we have high rates of unemployment, high rates of welfare dependency, large numbers of working poor holding down casual jobs, low education, impoverished public resources, limited access to information, bad interenet connections and lots of pokies. What is strong though is the dense network of communal relationships that constitute civil society and give us our social identity and sense of belonging. Social values and relationships are important here. The values debate means something here.

Some Canbera news has filtered through. I gather that the imperial Presidency is making a quick touchdown in Australia to have a chat to a few hand selected politicians, military types and business men. They will be discussing guns and money as Margo Kingston puts it; not ways to inject some life into Australian democracy by transferring more power to the Australian people.

Howard and democratic reform? It jarrs. Howard, like Keating before him, stands for increased executive dominance.

From my perspective on the south coast I can see that most of the political/public policy debate in Australia comes from people living in the inner city of Melbourne and Sydney. They----righties and lefties---are political insiders who seek power and influence and they are somewhat reluctant to share it around. They are about the concentration of power and the preservation of the ruling power elites.

That elitism comes through so very clearly with the Wentworth Liberal pre-selection battle. Branchstacking has nothing to do with making a decentralized political space for people to have their opinions heard and for their activities making a difference. They are just numbers in an elite political strategy within an liberal political system with authoritarian currents. This transit-lounge politics makes it very difficult for ordinary citizens to take greater control over their lives in a globalised world.

A globalised world in the coastal struggle street with its suburban values means a world without borders and order. It means a sense that the anchors of our everyday lives----family, community and national identity---are being swept away by the movement of the global tide. Though people get by and, though they acquire a bit of wealth, they feel more powerless. They, along with a lot of Australian suburbia, are outside the political, economic and cultural elite concentrated in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. They desire a bigger say in decision making.

The conservative call for more law and order, security and patriotism resonate here with the lifstyle politics. They are seen to have a big edge in the values debate in our public culture.

You can see the way that politics is local.

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September 18, 2003

on the ropes

The educational legislation to reform the universities has been introduced in House of Representatives by Brendan Nelson The $1.5 billion package is controversial. It would double the number of full-fee paying students, allow universities flexibility to raise fees by 30 per cent and allow students to take out government loans for their courses, to be paid back with interest on completion.

According to Minister Nelson education is now about realizing your potential through the marketplace. Education contra the market is a historical relic.

The Government hopes to push the radical changes through the Parliament before Christmas but the Senate is not playing ball. The ALP says no. The Democrats say no. The Greens say no. That leaves the 4 Independent Senators to negotiate.

That political play is becoming a familar routine in Canberra. I saw it when I watched the Heritage Legislation pass through the Senate. The ALP just said no even though that legislation was an improvement.

So what is up with the ALP these days? Why is it so rigid? So inflexible?

This account of the ALP by Peter Botsam is a a good one. The ALP's divisions are deep and structural, it is tearing itself apart, there are no new policies are coming out of Canberra, it is doing a poor job as an opposition party in putting heat on the Howard Government, and is doing the only thing it knows. Count the numbers.

And no one seems to care that the ALP has lost its way.

I have to admit to admit that I do not know know what is going on with the ALP apart from the dead hand of Labor factionalism.

Bostsman says that solution for the ALP can only be a long-term one:

"The only constructive strategy is to wait for the present group to be pensioned off, build better foundations of participation within the party, create a broader ideological base for party policies and ideas, rework the process of electing representatives, and open up the membership to a new dynamic group of supporters who do not fit the traditional mould of Labor. Only when these reforms are achieved will the discipline, strength and talent come back to Labor."

Has the ALP lost its way?

The culture of the ALP has turned inward. It acts as if it were a government in waiting not as an opposition. It is primarily concerned about the ALP not the good of the country.

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September 17, 2003

oh yeah

So the case for invading Iraq remains rock solid? Yes, says an editorial in The Australian. It says that not even a dent has been made in the case for going to war.

I'm not kidding you:

"Revelations that the peak British intelligence committee warned of risks in disarming Saddam Hussein have generated much ado about very little....The fact their warnings did not sway the British Government does not mean Prime Minister Tony Blair and his colleagues were derelict - they considered this, along with the committee's other advice, and made the decision to attack Iraq on the basis of all the evidence before them, evidence which was overwhelmingly in favour of the case for war."

Funny, I thought the justifications for war were faulty. Iraq was not involved in 9/11; Iraq was not closely to connected al Qaeda; and there is lot of doubt about Iraq's ongoing production of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons of mass destruction that we were told Saddam had stockpiled, could use against the West at short notice or might pass on to Islamic terrorists, have disappeared.

Not to worry. There are no doubts for The Australian:

"As a British parliamentary inquiry into the intelligence provided to the Blair Government put it last week 'there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active, chemical, biological and nuclear programs'. Which is far more positive than the admission by the BBC's director-general, Greg Dyke, that his subordinates considered the story involving now deceased weapons scientist David Kelly, which alleged the Government had sexed-up the case for war, was 'marred by flawed reporting'".

This is hard to square with this or this. Nothing about a proper accounting of the Howard Government's decision-making. There is nothing murky in domestic politics being hidden at all, and there is no need to build a climate of acountability.

Nor is any case made by The Australian that Iraq was an imminent threat to Australia. So the case for doing right amounts to little more than going along with the US for the sake of the alliance.

Oh, and it was a good outcome. Saddam was removed. There is nothing here about the US occupation of Iraq going badly wrong, the lack of a democrated Iraq, the big failure in nation building in Afghanistan, or the failure of military fix to solve political problems.

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August 30, 2003

right hand left hand

This article by Geoff Kitson highlights the way the Howard Liberal Government dealt with the political threat posed by the populist anger to economic reform. You have the right hand of Prime Minister co-opting populism, whilst the left hand of Tony Abbott, a senior Minister, is used to undermine the financial capacity of Pauline Hanson's One Nation's to promote the right wing populist policies.

It is called honest politics.

It is a broad movement. Another example is the ALP's hypocrisy for feigning outrage now about Abbott's "secret slush fund" to undermine One Nation populism. As Geoff Kitney observes:

"Labor's hypocrisy is undeniable: it did nothing and said nothing at the time of Abbott's fund-raising activities, which were known publicly, because it would have been the first to celebrate success by Abbott."

The ALP defined this regional populism as a blacklash emotive conservatism with nativist and racist overtones.

It is the honest politics described above that once fueled, and continues to fuel, the populist attack on Canberra-style politics. It talks a political language of democratic deficit at a time when democracy is equated with the free market. Both professional parties acted to exclude and defeat the populist insurgency to top-down economc rule; a rebellion based on grassroots opposition to oppressive political and cultural elites. Populism argues that the ordinary person is not the master of his or her fate, that the political system imperfectly reflects the popular interest and that the popular interest should be supreme, in contrast to narrow elite interests.

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August 22, 2003

Madam, the charge is treason

I have always suspected that the political unconscious of Australian conservatism equates criticism of the Howard Government with being the enemy within.

During the Iraqi war the enemy within was generally charged with anti-Americanism. At one level that meant the critics were only against the conservative America of George Bush. At another level in Australia it also signified the critics were anti the Anerican alliance. Thus it signified being on the side of those who challenged America's geopolitical interests.

The conservatives operate with a conception of politics based on the existential friend/enemy distinction. During the Iraqi war that conception of criticism came close to equating criticism of the US pre-emptive strike policy, and its desire to reshape the whole of the Midlde East, as siding with the external enemy. Siding with the enemy meant supporting Saddam Hussein.

It meant supporting totalitarianism. It meant supporting brutal repression of the Iraqi people. It meant being anti-democracy and opposed to freedom. It meant being anti-Australia. It meant supporting the threatening Other. That meant militant Islam and terrorists who were laying seige to Fortress Australia.

The "logic"---the emotional structure---of the political unconscious equates that with treason.

John Howard emotionally implied as much. He deployed his political code that addresses the political unconscious without ever actually saying as much in words.

But now the political unconscious has surfaced in a parliamentary debate over Telstra. A National Party hitter, De-Anne Kelly, has accused two NSW independents Peter Andren and Tony Windsor of supporting Saddam Hussein.

According to Radio National this morning both Andren and Windsor supported Australia going to war with Iraq under the UN flag.

You only see the political unconscious surfacing every now and aqain. But surface it did with de-Anne Kelly. The word treason is not mentioned. It doesn't need to be. The conservative political unconscious translates the accusation of supporting Saddam Hussein as treason.

How do we interpret what surfaced? For starters, we can say that conservative Australia is not unconsciously and compulsively wedded to liberal political values. It rejects these in relation to democracy. It is deeply suspicious of criticism; to the point of detesting political critique, even though it frequently launches a critique (political criticism ) of the activist High Court from Parliament in an attempt to undermine the independence of the judiciary and authority of the High Court.

And they have often done so without the conventions of restraint so that their "political criticism" amounts to a political attack. Conservatives have consciously broken the legitimate boundaries of debate and conduct between the judiciary and Parliament as defined by conventions of restraint by making the criticism personal and attacking the integrity of judges. The classic example is the attack on Justice Michael Kirby.

Domestically, conservatism is excessively frightened of ideological or political challenge, producing what can only be called 'McCarthyism'---hunting the enemies-of-the-people with the pretence that the enemy within is under the bed. De-Anne Kelly indicates that Australian conservatives are deeply and excessively threatened by ideological challenges. Their very identity as a people is at stake in them and they are unused to defending themselves ideologically.

Their conception of freedom in Australia is limited by a deep conformitarian ethos. This ethos is profoundly anti-individualistic, because the common standard is its core and deviations from that standard inspire it with an irrational fright.

We can see this with the reaction by conservative Australia to the challenge thrwon up by the neo-liberal mode of governance of the 1980s and 1990s. Conservatism asserts the preeminence of tradition in American life in opposition to an an anti-historical rationalism of economic liberalism. Australian conservative typically expressed the desire to preserve a valued way of life against disruptive and alienating changes. It characterized society as an organic whole, knit together by traditions and the institutions through which they are sustained. It regarded with deep skepticism, and latent hostility, the market liberal's proposals for sweeping transformations of social life.

So what is de Anne Kelly doing here? What is being bought into play is the special mission for an elite ---ie ., the National Party vis-a-vis the populist independents. As a member of this elite, De-Anne Kelly is acting not only as a guardian of cultural traditions and dominant institutions but also as the conscious bearer of tradition. She is acting as one of the elites chiefly responsible for initiating whatever modifications to our public institutions the altered circumstances of globalization seem to require.

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August 21, 2003

thoughts on Pauline Hanson

I have to admit that I thought that Pauline Hanson was harshly dealt with by the law. Her populist policies, which were a response to the negatives of neo-liberalism of the ALP, were pretty much incorporated by the Howard Government and are a key to his electoral success. Hanson ends up in jail for electoral fraud whilst those in the ALP who commit electoral fraud are on track for have stellar careers as machine organizers. Double standards are operating here. But they always do with the political establishment.

My judgement is that a populist Hanson was more than a shooting political comet who put in a good populist performance. She had an enormous impact on Australian political life. In John Pasquarelli's words this impact:

"....is because, when Labor people abandoned Keating to vote for her and subsequently became disenchanted with the shambles that One Nation became, they didn't go back home, but went off and voted for John Howard."

We are living with that consequences of that shift today. My assessment of the significance of populism as a political philosophy can be found here and here.

Here are some quite different thoughts from public opinion's guest blogger Rose Farrow.

Following our chat about Pauline Hanson today, I unravelled a few of my thoughts on the question of whether the sentence was just, and how much I should compensate for my disgust of her message. Obviously, a bit, because she is pretty foul. And she had a big impact in giving the racist shadow of our very white, western culture a voice. We can argue about whether she just burst a boil or fed a cancer, but she wasn't really on trial for that, anyway. She was on trial for fraud. So.

When a decision is made to imprison a person for a crime, the judge and ultimately the community must decide whether it was 'fair' of not. When coming to a decision on fairness, we often do a measure based on similar cases where the punishment seems more lenient, or contrasting cases when the punishment was lighter for a 'worse' offence.

Other things to consider are the position of the perpetrator, in terms of their knowledge of the law and their obligations, their power within the situation relative to others, their power in society and the responsibility that that power brings with it. For example, is a policeman stealing worse than a salesman....is a priest abusing an orphan worsethan a stranger abusing a child.... is robbing from a pensioner worse than robbing from a wealthy person... And then there is the issue of harm to be considered. Is the crime victimless? Who are the victims? How much harm? Is white collar crime ever as harmful as violent crime?

In the Hanson case, there seems to be a case to say that worse crimes have attracted lighter sentences. This 'relative' argument can go either way. Should the fact that unfairly light sentences for worse crimes have been given by other judges on other days for other crimes, be used to meter out an overly light sentence in any given instance?

With regard to the position of the perpetrator, Hanson is a lawmaker, a position she sought willingly and deliberately. She felt she was up to the demands of the job, whether you or I think she was or not. She took its privileges and sought to use it to persuade people to her philosophy and goals. In partnership with others, she became part of a company which she paraded as a political party, structured expressly to be able to ditch the political vehicle at any given time of her/their chosing. The company even went so far as to get undated 'resignations' from people who thought they were joining her political
party, in case they ever strayed from the company's agenda. The fact that this structure ultimately had unintended consequences does not necessarily mitigate the conscious act itself.

Hanson sought power through the political process, yet sought to avoid the political limitations, that is the need to bring people along with you in sufficient numbers to be relevant. She is probably walking on thin ice, too, if she seeks to avoid the responsibility being a lawmaker brings, ie., to set the example by obeying the law. It really is her responsibility to at least attempt to ensure that her partners and supporters do not step over the legal line.

With regard to the issue of harm, we need to look at the reason why the law is there in the first place. We have strict laws about how political parties are structured and how they must represent themselves, and where the money goes, and who is in charge of what, and how they conduct themselves because this accountability goes to the heart of the democratic process. If we don't monitor and enforce this, why should anyone, powerful of not, co-operate with the system, obey the laws, etc. So when Hanson subverts the intent, letter and spirit of the law, the law has little choice but to be enforced----even if we can all find instances when this has not occurred----especially if it is in the public glare.

And Hanson certainly welcomed the glare! And she also advocated a strong law and order policy, particularly with regard to the least powerful in our society---- Aborigines and migrants. The words hoisted on her own petard spring to mind.

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August 9, 2003

Saturday's Australian Cartoon

Nicholson

Such a simple message.

How to interpret it? That's the trick.

Here's one attempt. It places the emphasis on civic entrepreneurship � using the resources of government to make a difference. It is hard to disagree with a bush camp program that enables indigenous urban youth the opportunity:

"...the young participants sell their products to locals and tourists from their market stalls in Cairns and Kuranda. All the profits are shared according to individual productivity. Boys are taught about marketing, labelling, price formation, operational efficiency and selling methods. Young men learn that true Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men do not take drugs and commit crimes � they are strong, resilient and earn money the proper way."

It is along the lines of social entrepreneurs who argue that solutions to unemployment or a lack of services can come from communities themselves in partnership with business. Empowering communities can come from communities themselves in partnership with business.

And this is how the criminologists see it:

"The approach utilises re-integration shaming and elements of narrative therapy. Re-offending, laziness, drug and alcohol abuse are proclaimed by the group to be the behaviours of weak-minded children who have no respect for themselves and others. Relapses of these behaviours are openly challenged however the individual is subsequently forgiven and accepted back into the group. The alternative story is where all young participants are strong, hard-working young men with pride and self-respect who earn their money the proper way."

Sounds as if its a viable alternative to the topdown ASTIC approach advocated by Ray Robinson on this recent Four Corners Program.

Is Noel Person's understanding of self-help the underlying philosophy for a new kind of policy direction by Aboriginal Australians away from the comprehensive dependence upon passive welfare for their livelihood.

Self-help for Noel Pearson is making the break from a welfare income provisioning for people dispossessed from the real economy. That is the �Aboriginal industry� that is preoccupied with servicing dysfunctional communities. Making a break involves taking a step into economic employment in the regional economy a viable one. Is it also a viable way for indigenous Australians to deal with their social disintegration and instability of Aboriginal communities?

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July 28, 2003

the lie of the land

Robert Manne has an interesting account on why the Australia reaction to the spin and lies about the threat Iraq posed to Australia is much more muted than in the US and the UK.

War is a serious business:

And civilians get hurt big time:

So we need to remember that Australia went to a war with a country that has not attacked Australia, and no credible evidence of the intention of the Iraq to attack Australia was produced. We followed the US.

The reason for the US intervention was to ensure that the US was centered in the Middle East, that it could fundamentally reorder the strategic balance in the region, and that it could do so to defend Israel's strategic interests in the region. The rhetoric of war aimed to persuade public opinion, and it placed an emphasis on the WMD question and the links the Hussein regime had with Al Qaeda.

As Daniel Drezner points out the fallout has been on the ethical and practical implications of these tactics. This article and this one by Stephen den Beste in the Wall Street Opinion Journal reckon that the two level tactics of the rhetorical strategy to persuade public opinion were okay; Josh Marshall disagrees.

This debate has little resonance in Australia. Manne says that the muted response in Australia--ie., the lack of fallout---is a combination of:

---a weak Labor opposition that has adopted an electoral strategy of prioritising domestic issues over national security ones;

----the moribund character of the contemporary Australian parliamentary system which means that our parliamentarians are simply incapable of pursuing a matter of public interest where a government is vulnerable but an opposition leadership is weak.

---an acceptance by Australian citizens that it okay to lie in order to achieve a desirable end. If the Government needs to twist the truth a little, then this is a relatively trivial price to pay.

---and an acceptance that our support for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was nothing less than the insurance premium we are required to pay in return for the security we received from association with a great and powerful friend.

I think that Manne is right on this. There is an acceptance of US hegemony, of the way the neo-conservative Bush administration has defined good and evil in international affairs and the open-ended pre-emptive strategy. Australians have accepted Howard's linking Australia's national interest to that of an imperial US. Howard's judgements on national security are trusted by Australian citizens; as are the strategic shifts Howard has made in Australian foreign policy. Accepted here means judgement not passivity.

The implication of these judgements is that, unlike the US and the UK, the public debate in Australia has been very muted. As Glen Condell over at Blogorrhoea asks:

"Where is that debate? Our gloriously diverse media don't seem to be banging on about it."

They are not. But they should be calling the Howard Government to account, if they watchdogs for democracy.

So where to now? One option to to keep engaging in criticism to keep the embers of critical thinking alive in the public sphere.

If we adopt this perspective then we can discern a bit of debate in Australia. It has different concerns to the UK and US one. Thus Paul Kelly (no links) talks in terms of imperial overreach arising from a combination of open-ended pre-emptive strategy and substantial budget deficits. Kelly mentions three lines of criticism of the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy: its aggression provokes rogue states; it exaggerates what the US can achieve alone; and it downplays the importance of winning the battle of ideas.

It is more than a debate about the US as the new Rome. It is about the implications of the strategic direction of Australia's foreign policy under the Howard Government. Thus Ross Garnett says that:

"...two long-standing premises of foreign policy have been violated.

One is that close and productive relations with prominent Asian countries are critically important to Australian security and prosperity.

Another is that the ANZUS treaty has served Australia well and works best for both Australia and the US over the long haul if Australia exercises independent judgment about its national interest."

The debate---what there is --- is over these two issues in Australia. Is the Asian region of critical importance to Australia, or should Australia hitch its star to the US? Should Australia exercise independent judgement about its national interst or just go along with the US?

There has not been much of a debate so far.

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July 17, 2003

Governing the country

Canberra is in winter recess and many of the politicians are taking a break. This space from the political hurly burly gives us a moment in which to reflect on governing the country in relation to the Murray-Darling Basin in the light of Ticky Fullerton's 4 Corners piece on the River Murray. That program was about governance--ensuring social change and water reform--- even if the issue of governance was not directly addressed.

It strikes me that the current mode of governance is a dead end as it is unable to perform the changes required to save the Murray-Darling River system that is now locked into the global economy. The current mode of governance is not delivering. There is a lot of talk, plans and meetings but the river's health continues to worsen.

I do not think that more of the same with tinkering at the edges (eg., reforming the Murray-Darling Basin Commission or its Ministerial Council), will give the necessary governance capacities.

And the view that markets, civil society and non-governmental organizations can compensate for, or fill this lack, strikes me as pie in the sky.

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July 15, 2003

a husk of its former self

This article makes for sad reading. It is an insider's account of the stranglehold that factional politics now have over the ALP. The ALP has been become a factional machine.

Chris Schacht, a former ALP Senator from the ALP, makes two good points. First,

'...in the past 15 to 20 years market research in the ALP has become almost an end in itself. Labor Party policy presented at election times is now designed after being "market researched"'.

Secondly, a sucessful career is measured in terms of years served for th faction. All the energies in climbign the ladder are devoted to furthering the faction. Chris says:

"Faction always comes before party or community. After several years of faithful factional service you may be promoted to the front bench because your faction has been allocated a certain percentage of positions. Again, merit is secondary. You keep out of trouble, serve several years as frontbencher, retire to the back bench, and then after a term or two retire from parliament."

So we cannot expect much from the ALP as a reform-based party. As Chris observes, the factional system produces:

"...a new breed of factionally bred and trained ALP officials, are technocrats whose aim is to win elections as an end in itself - not the means to introduce policies that have a coherent vision for a better society."

Is there anything more to be said?

Well, its a tragic life for a young, bright MP who wants to make Australia a better place. Obviously they have misunderstood the point of politics and are in the wrong career.

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July 11, 2003

but no one told me

The Iraq weapons story continues to leak through the wall of secrecy, disinformation and spin that has been thrown around the war by the war mongers selling war on behalf of the national security state.

In Britain it is no longer WMD per se, it is now WMD programs. Programs are not weapons. And the White House is backtracking on its claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium (yellowcake) in Niger.

From Canberra we have a case of deja vu. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that:

"The Office of National Assessments (ONA) yesterday revealed it knew American agencies in January had doubts over claims Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa but did not pass the information on to Prime Minister John Howard."

And in another report

"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) admitted last night that it knew intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program was questionable shortly before the Prime Minister, John Howard, presented it to Parliament to build a case for war....The department claims it did not tell Mr Howard or the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, of information from the American State Department in January that cast doubt on claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa."

Of course they knew. They would not be doing their job if they did not know about the dodgy information. It is their job to sift and sort.

What we have here is the second wall of defence being deployed. It was deployed in the children overboard affair. It requires the public servants to take the rap, to be the fall guys. It enables to Howard to say that he is not for turning and to keep his political mystique intact.

Of course, we do have to allow the possibility that ONA is also incompetent. After all, some of it's intelligence in the children overboard was based on previous ministerial press releases.

I plumb for the public servants taking the rap and the politicians then defending them by saying they have complete confidence in them and protecting them from any inquiry. Whilst we watch the defence being played we can have a bit of a laugh at the gyrations of these kind of warmonger journalists.

Update
If you buy Honest John Howard's story that the Niger yellowcake scenario was an insignificant one sentence buried in an annex to a big report, (a minor detail as it were), then have a read of this old article by Seymour Harris in the New Yorker. (Link courtesy of Crikey.com email service.) Harris argues that the British spy agencies were peddling falsehoods as part of a deception program, and that the yellowcake scenario was treated as highly significant in Washington.

On this account, the possibility exists that both ONA and the Department of Foreign Affairs were peddling falsehoods. Were they too engaged in a deception campaign? Are they engaged in one now?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 10, 2003

a man of constant compassion

There is an article in yesterdays Australian Financial Review by Tony Harris called. Minister a law unto himself (subscription required). It refers to Philip Ruddock, the Minister of Immigration, sending home those Afghans (3800) & Iraqis (4200) temporary protection visas when their visas expire.

But an exception will be made for those East Timorese (1600) on temporary protection visas. They can stay in Australia. They will be treated exceptionally. Ruddock will use his discretionary powers to override the requirements of law.

Why the compassion?

Would it have anything to do with the Iraqi's and Afghans being sent home because of their Islamic religion, and so they are not one of us? Or are the East Timorese be allowed to stay because they are Christians and so one of us?

Do the national security state conservatives see the clash of civilizations in this stark way?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 6, 2003

spin & publicity on family/work

Anne Manne is right. John Howard promises a lot to help ease the tensions and stresses in the family/work relationhip. Just like water reform, it is all done with lots of fanfare. Then Howard fails to deliver anything of substance.

Anne says:

John Howard has declared the struggle to balance work and family the great Australian "barbecue stopper". His third term began with large promises of reform. It looked like he would set a new family policy agenda. Hopes were raised on paid maternity leave and on new, generous allowances for a child's first year.

Yet the kudos he derives from such policy floats - as a modern and progressive leader - is wildly in excess of actual delivery. Apart from popping up here and there, wiping away a metaphoric tear, making concerned fatherly noises about the struggles of parents with the time crunch, Howard has done very little."

It is spin and publicity to keep the white picket fence voters on side by talking about a compassionate conservatism.

And Anne is spot on with putting her finger on the problem in the work/family relationship.

"The problem is simple enough. Women have long absorbed the vicissitudes of everyday life - the care of the young, the sick and the elderly. By and large they still do. But many also work. Men, too, whether through our enhanced understanding of the importance of fathers, or via women's changed role, are under greater pressure to do more at home.Yet our workplaces, by and large, are still based on the 19th century principle that for every worker there is a wife at home providing a "haven in a heartless world".

The economists have said the market is the solution. Let us create a family market. Buy all the services that the household needs to function well--child care, aged care, nursing, cleaning, laundry and gardening. You name you can buy it and continue with making your career moves by working even longer and harder.

It is not a very successful pathway since only the wealthy can afford that option. And I cannot see work changing. The emphasis is on making people work harder with longer hours, less holidays and more unpaid overtime. That leaves you with a family policy for the white picket fence.

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June 29, 2003

after the corruption

I have refrained in commenting on the disaster that is ASTIC.

But I concur with this article. The corruption is too great. It is time for Clarke and Robinson to pack their bags and return to private life. They have done enough damage.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:46 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 28, 2003

in trust we place our faith

Social capital has been picked up by the neo-liberals in recognition that civil society exists and the market is not everything. And it is being deployed as a way of fostering social cohesion and community obligation to pick up the pieces from the fall out of economic reform.

In today's Weekend Australian there is an article entitled, 'Costello puts his faith in trust', by Dennis Shanahan & Megan Saunders. (no link, June 28-29, 2003, p. 4) The article is a report of a speech given by The Treasurer to an Anglicare lunch in Sydney. It is the Treasurer speaking on wider issues in an attempt to broaden his political appeal.

It addresses the role of charities with the windback of the welfare state under a neo-liberal mode of governance, and people falling through the large holes in the welfare safety net. Not that the Treasurer would have put it that way, of course.

So what does Costello say? He makes a big point upfront.

"Trust is a very important feature in our society. Trust is part of the social capital that our society relies on. Trust is hard won but easily lost".

He illustrates the claim with recent events involving the Churches. These have been strong moral critcs of the Howard Government's policies, but did not get too worked up about the moral failure of some of their priests inside the church. Costello then says:

"This suspicion that the institution of the Church may have been easier on itself than it was on others is corrosive of trust. I don't know if the moral failures we are now aware of are recent developments. But I do know that in an information society very little can now be hidden."

After suggesting that big government and charities corrode trust by being inefficient, Costello turns to the hole in the saftey net and the role of the volunteer sector vis-a-vis the state. He says that the role of small government is only to supply income support for the jobless, homeless and disabled.

"...that income support provides insulation against poverty but it does not treat the cause of poverty. Let us take a visible example. A homeless man who is drug or alcohol dependent will probably be entitled to income support. Mostly it will be the disability pension. The pension should be enough to provide food and shelter. But it doesn't in his case because the money he receives is always spent on the wrong thing. And it always will be until you treat the cause of the poverty which is alcohol and drug dependence."

Governments cannot cure poverty or marriage breakdown. The role of the charity is to address the cause of poverty:

"...these agencies can make more immediate and individual contact with those in need. They are run by people of religious and moral conviction willing to share their values in support of treating underlying causes of poverty. But, in addition these agencies are also targeting the giver as well as the receiver. They want you."

Costello argues that this volunteering is a good thing because it fosters social capital in civil society (Costello does not use the word civil society). He says that:

"Involvement in a voluntary association or charity enriches the giver as well as the receiver. And in a complex web of relationships between givers, service providers and those in need, all are drawn together and benefit in different ways. This is social capital. Outside Government, people of like mind and common endeavour have come together for a common purpose... They are not relating now through the tax file number and the bank account. They are relating as people."

According to Costello one of the positives of limited government is that it allows the non-government associations to develop and prosper and deepen the social relationships in a community.

So it is social capital as embodied in the practices of volunteer groups, Meals on Wheels and Neighbourhood Watch, and not trust, that is Costello's key idea.

And the politics of social capital? It is that the welfare state can be wound back and the charities do what the neo-liberal state does not do. It tacitly recognizes that free markets do not ensure that the fruits of growth are equally distributed. hence we have the limitation of free markets, especially in the era of globalization. Instead of doign the social democratic number and calling for government interventions to ameliorate the negative effects of 'unbridled self-interest and laissez-faire policies', Costello turns to the charities.

But where are the charities going to get their money to provide the services for drug or alcohol dependency, the fallout from marriage breakdown or mental illness?We cannot trust the government to pay for these services because they are not doing it at the moment. They are too busy ensuring the security of prosperity, being fiscally responsibly and ensuring budget surpluses to please the international money market. Many who fall through the safety net----called service and support gaps--- become homeless, rely on food kitchens and often end up in prison.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 27, 2003

politics and aesthetics

In his post on aesthetics and politics James Russell pretty much follows the Two Blowhards in finding primarily political people (PPP) boring.

Michael over at Two Blowhards says:

"Temperamentally, though, I don't have a clue where the PPPs are coming from. I can't imagine a worse life or, generally, a worse set of people. Politics to me is, at best, an unfortunate necessity. We don't seem to be able to do without politics -- alas to that. But PPPs can't seem to stop scheming; they can't stop dreaming up ways to suck up to power, or imagining things they'd like to see government do."

And James says "I don't understand people like that either."

Passion Michael & James Passion. Just like artists and lovers. Tis not sucking up to power. It is being seduced by power just like people are seduced by sex.
Being commanders and legislators is a huge turn on.

James goes onto say:

"...frankly I'm puzzled by people for whom politics is a consuming interest (especially those actively involved in it at whatever level). What else do they do with their time? What other interests they have? What sports do they play? What music do they listen to? Do they read any books outisde of their political interests? I can't really conceive of a person whose interests are so narrow they don't go beyond politics."

Here politics is counterposed to politics. I could contest this separation by writing about the way aesthetics has a political dimension. But that is old hat. It is far more interesting to look at it the other way round. The way politics is informed by aesthetics.

Politics is aesthetics. Its all about appearance and stage managed performance. Ever watched the House of Representatives through the eyes of aesthetics? Its Grand Oratory for the cameras and journalists. They are performing in front of a mirror. Watch how they dress, organize their body, use their hands. Its aesthetics. Pure aesthetics. They see themselves as orators on a stage. They have studied it.

An enormous amount of effort goes into that. Noticed how Howard looks Presidential these days on television. It stands out because it is still being put together.

They----their image minders---have learned the tricks from Hitler, of course. Though they will never admit that it was Hitler who first put politics and aesthetics together. It goes by the name of advertising today. And big money is spent on it.

Just check out Triumph of the Will by having a look at some of these images. Politics and aesthetics are fused. Nothing in Australia comes close to that by either Liberal, Labor Democrats or Nationals. But they milk it unconsciously.

And goodness me, what was the Hillary and Bill Show of a few years back? Was it not politics as aesthetics dressed up as entertainment?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 24, 2003

Harradine's feather duster

I see that the Senate is doing its job with the Howard Government's proposed media reforms to increase the power of the big media.

The 4 Independent Senators are now making life difficult for Senator Alston. It looks as if Senator Harradine has found a way to allow for a lot of movement from the cross-media ownership point whilst preventing the big consolidation of the ownership of existing services. And he has done in such a way to gain support from the other Senators.

Its a good power play, don't you think? Scratching democracy where it itches. Very Socratic.

Margo Kingston doesn't seem to agree. She is almost in mourning at a sell out.

I also see that the media policy experts are speaking up. Jock Given's diagnosis of the outcome of the Alston's proposed legislation is good, but he has only disdain for the Senate, seeing it as little more than a feather duster.

I suspect that the feather duster Harradine once hung across his door to signify his insignificance after the GST has been taken down.

Will the old fox continue the noble tradition of going for long walks in the parliamentary gardens surrounded by a bevy of cameras, and meeting all media inquiries with quixotic replies and sphinx like smiles?

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June 21, 2003

At last

It has taken a long time to be said. And it should have been said before the war not way after it was finished.

What is it? It is this.

"AUSTRALIA went into Iraq because of its alliance with the US, not because of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and not to liberate its people."

(I will quibble about 'went into'. It should be 'invade'.)

That was said by Paul Kelly. It is to his credit that he said it, and then backs it up with this:

"The reason the US went to war was to destroy Hussein's regime and to remake the Middle East. Iraq's WMD capability was a lesser factor and a rationale used to win world opinion to the cause."

(Kelly doesn't say why the US needed to remake the Middle East. Why isn't this sort of stuff put on the table).

The WMD capability was a rationale, says Kelly, because "the UN would never sanction a war for the sole aim of regime change" or we can add, for the US to remake the Middle East for its own geopolitical reasons. So they hunted around for rationales that would be persuasive to shift public opinion. It is in the 'hunting around' that the problem lies. Two levels of discourse exist: a secret inner government circle one and a simplistic public one.

Democracy dies behind closed doors.

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June 17, 2003

The deck chair reshuffles

I found it hard to get enthused about the leadership turmoil in the federal ALP over the last week. It made no sense to me in terms of public policy (both contestants agreed on the little policy of the ALP that does exist). So the conflict must have had lots to do with the Byzantine factional politics that constitute the current ALP.

The best that can be said for the deck chair reshuffles is that it was an exercise in democracy. Caucus actually got to have a vote on its leadership a vote for once.

That is a giant step forward for the ALP.

The worst that can be said for the reshuffle attempt is that it amounts to self-destructive bloodletting by a political party that is party is divided, confused and pessimistic. The first step in renewal since 1996? Is that what all the stuff about policy ideas means? Renewal? It is difficult not to agree with the conservative CapitalR.org.

"None of these internal battles will change the public's perception of the ALP - regardless of who is leader. Crean was right about one point during this campaign - elections are not a beauty contest. They are all about policy - and the perceptions of policy.Crean may be announcing policy - but the perception still exists that they are a policy-free zone."

The ALP gets media attention for its leadership squabbles not for its policies. Howard controls the public policy agenda. So maybe the pathway forward to a policy-driven 21st century ALP is more bloodletting? Maybe the deck chair shuffles was about to showing the colours and seeking to tie up the votes of the uncommitted and the waverers. As Norman Abjorensenit argues, this is phase one of the battle. This phase is essentially a softening up process and generally favours the incumbent.

"Like an advancing army, however, it establishes a beachhead and stakes out ground behind the lines. It marks the end of the phony war and from that point on it is for keeps."

The anti-Crean forces are still there.

The personal aspect of Crean on Australian Story last night showed someone who was not a whinger or an attack dog. The program that Crean's background was a member of the professional governing class in Australia. It presented a different Crean---a warm, engaging personality who was relaxed with people, interested in people, caring about his family and loyal to his staff. But, as Tim Colebatch argues, despite being 25 years in public life Crean does not have a public persona that incorporates those human qualities. The publci persona is crucial: it is what we judge the politician one in a media focused politics. Howard, in contrast, has crafted a very successful persona.

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June 11, 2003

misleading the nation into war.

This article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times says it simply and well. It is increasing looking as if citizens in the US, the UK and Australia were mislead about the reasons for going to war with Iraq. No smoking gun, no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, no connection between Iraq and September 11. No threat.

President Bush may be continuing to talk in terms of absolutes but the selling of the war with Iraq by these governments was dishonest and they should be accountable for that dishonesty. What the Howard Government does is attack the public broadcaster for questioning its spin on its AM prgrams in an attempt to marginalise or displace dissent.

It is the job of the Senate to make the Howard Government accountable for its dishonesty.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:07 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 10, 2003

Reforming the Senate

I heard Senator Ferris on Radio National this morning over breakfast. She spoke as the Government Whip in the Senate and talked about an obstructionist Senate that was in need of reform to reduce its power. She defended the Prime Minister's proposal for a joint sitting of both houses to be held without the government having to go to an election as is the case now (double dissolution). She--a South Australian Senator--- did so by portraying the Senate as obstructionist by nature.

A joint sitting means the Government would have the numbers to get its legislation through. A double dissolution election---- the deadlock-breaking mechanism provided by the constitution---is electorally risky for the Coalition Government as it would likely increase the power of the Greens in the Senate at the expense of the ALP

I agree with Harry Evans, Clerk of the Senate, on John Howard's proposal to resolve deadlock over legislation between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Evans said it simply and well:

"Obviously this scheme [Howard's] would mean the Senate becoming a political rubber stamp for the policies of the government, as the House of Representatives is now."

In the Oz blogging world Ken Parish agrees as does Tim Dunlop and Alerion at Southerly Bluster (no permalinks).

As for the ALP, it cannot be trusted to defend the powers of the Senate. The ALP is not strong on federalism. They are primarily centralists who see the Senate as unrepresentative, undemocratic and obstructionist as more like a House of Lords when it is actually more like the US Senate. The ALP is committed to reducing the power of the Senate to ensure executive dominance in the name of changing our horse and buggy constitution. Witness the enthusiasm for the Howard plan by the NSW Labor Premier, Bob Carr who has no qualms about weakening the powers of the Senate to ensure the supremacy of the House of Representatives (and the executive.)

What we have here is an example of what the public philosopher at philosophy.com drew attention to in this post: that new forms of domination arise out of liberal democracy. Margo Kingston spots it calling it a neo-liberal, read corporatist model of power. This model is confirmed by the neo-liberal commentators. Alan Wood,as a free market liberal talks in terms of small government when he actually means executive dominance. Padraic P. McGuinness follows suit muttering about the irrationality of the Senate's left wing. The Australian thunders away on the same theme even manging to call the move to executive dominance a shift to small government whilst keeping a straight face. And Paul Kelly supports executive dominance as a solution to the "long-term governance obstacle in the nation's adaptation to globalisation."

The key constitutional problem, as Greg Craven pointed out is that:

"One of the greatest contemporary problems of Australia's constitutional system is that there are too few limits on government power.A popular prime minister with a supportive backbench is like an elephant in the jungle. What he likes, he takes, and what he dislikes, he stamps to death.One of the few restraints on such a prime minister is the Senate. The Senate is composed of an equal number of senators proportionately elected from each state, and it is not normally dominated by either of the major parties.

This means that in the Senate, the prime minister's word is not law. It is merely his idea of what the law should be. This is very frustrating for governments, and there is no doubt that the Senate contains its fair share of irritating dingbats. But in a democracy, a certain amount of irritation is good for a government's soul."

Scratching the body of democracy where it irritates is a good working model of Socratic criticism. It helps to keep the politicians honest.

A constitutional amendment is required to achieve the Howard proposal. It has no chance of passing 4 states. WA and SA would say no to the dominance by NSW and Victoria. The Sydney Morning Herald likes the idea of removing more checks and balances to the executive power to ensure NSW dominance over the nation.

So the reform is a political gambit by Howard to put pressure on the Senate. But underneath the gambit lurks the spectre of executive rule as a technical means to a functional end: shaping Australia to ensure that it fits the requirements of the global economic systems. You can hear the underground script in the background to Senator Ferris's words: emergency measures are required to preserve a liberal constitutional order in times of crisis. What is required is an all-powerful sovereign who must rescue our constitutional order from its constitutional mechanisms.

Update

Here is the voice of a Labor centralist who would like to muzzle the Senate and weaken federalism. None other than Gough Whitlam.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:22 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 7, 2003

a little fissure

One of the least remarked aspects of the Costello/Howard fallout by the Canberra Press Gallery is the differences between them suggested by Costello's deliberate use of 'tolerance.' Few have connected the liberal notion of a tolerant Australia to the conservative populism of the national security state as articulated by John Howard. That was encapsulated by a strong Australia. Some acknowledge that tolerance signifies Costello starting to sing his own song but they then more or less leave it at that.

In using this classic liberal word, Costello has marked a rupture with Howard's embrace of the old One Nation Party and Howard's exploitation of the fears and resentments of the One Nation electorate through an appeal to national belonging. Thus we have John Howard marketed as the traditional Anglo-Australian conservative with the white picket fence and the traditional family all drapped in the national flag.

Both Costello/Howard concur that Australia can only become prosperous through the free market, and that the state should be strong in terms of defending its borders and fighting international terrorism. But Costello's use of tolerance indicates a rupture with Howard's strong state defending the common cultural heritage against the non-white refugees desiring to become Australian citizens. A strong state protects its own Anglo-Australian culture from the aliens within and without in the name of Australia First. It says NO.

The conservative culture of the national security state is exclusionary and its strategy is to exploit the fears of the alien others now marked by Islam and Muslem. Some (cosmopolitan liberals) call it a xenophobic populism ie., the people against the elites, outsiders and scapegoats, with the nation defined in terms of ethnic nationalism. The 'We are all Australians' (Anzacs) populism is an appeal to Old Australia and its idea of assimilation, even if this appeal is also coupled to a strong dose of neo-liberalism and economic reform.

Costello's shift is a little fissure: a shift from ethnic to civic nationalism and thus to a more liberal nationalism. But tolerance is a big code word within the Liberal Party. It will have multiple meanings to those living within this culture. It will resonate with reconcilation and immigration issues.

From the outside looking in, tolerance stands for liberalism not conservatism; a way to achieve social cohesion within the national security state. It says that the way to an open, tolerant liberal society is through a civic nationalism. It holds things together to counteract the way market reform pulls things apart by creating winners and losers.

Update

So what does a tolerant liberal society mean apart from evoking warm fuzzy feelings? Try this:

"Well, according to him neo-conservatism asserts some people are better than others, while socialism asserts that everybody is the same. He says both are untrue because people do manifestly differ from one another, but those differences cannot be judged by anyone, so they must be tolerated if society is to exist at all. Thus, liberal tolerance is the only virtue that matters, perhaps the only virtue in existence...Liberal tolerance teaches that it is all right to disagree with the views or beliefs of another as long as you don't act on those beliefs to restrict the freedom of action and belief of others."

Liberal tolerance has its limits:

"....in the liberal version of tolerance you daren't disagree with their favourite causes or you're exorciated as a bigot, a fool, an exploiter of the poor, or a 'phobe' of some kind. That's exactly my point. Entertain a dissenting opinion, and you cross the limits of their fake tolerance on the spot."

So we wonder. What does Costello's appeal to tolerance stand for? Maybe we should question the the scope of tolerance. For instance, we should not be tolerate of those actions and beliefs that make people suffer through living damaged lives.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 5, 2003

the culture of the Liberal Party

Is this an accurate description of the culture of the Liberal Party?

Shaun Carney says:

"The Liberal Party's culture is similar to a business culture. Unlike the Labor Party, it is run from the top down and what the leader (or "boss") says goes....Indeed, it is in Howard's gift to hand over the pledges of fidelity from his MPs - it borders on hero worship with some - to Costello. All it would take would be some simple words along the lines of "I'm leaving and it is in your interests to get behind Peter". Virtually without exception, the response would be: "Whatever you say, John."

An authoritarian culture where everything is centred around political authority.

Does the Liberal Party also think that the country can be run as if it were Australian Inc. or Australia Unlimited Corp? Is that why they have some trouble understanding that Australia is a democracy. Or is deomcracy a bit of a shell in which the country is run like a business in that top-down style favoured by executives seeking fame adn fortune?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:40 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 4, 2003

it only takes a little twist

Funny thing parliamentary politics. Once upon a time the Coalition was sailing high with its hands firmly on the levers of power. The Labor Opposition was tearing itself apart. The Coalition was unassailable, as was the PM. The aura of statesman was being drapped around his shoulders. Myths were being constructed. You could see that this was the stuff of legend.

Then the leader says I'm staying on. The leader-in-waiting is closed out, but he accepts the decision even though he is shattered. He coveted the top job. He felt stabbed in the back. And he had been so loyal. He had worked so hard to provide the strong economic foundations for the Coalition's success.

That press conference was a defining moment. But What else can Peter Costello do? He gave a press conference and he put in an emotional performance that got the nation talking. But he could not spit the dummy. He had to adopt an acceptance mode and say that he will be the loyal deputy helping the leader rewrite the history books.

No doubt there are good reasons for delaying the transition of leadership in the Coalition Government. It looks to be the right call for the long-term interests of the Liberal party, the Coalition Government and the nation. So many will say in the Liberal Party.

But suddenly the media enframing is now in terms of disunity:---cohesion and unity have a question mark over them. The winning team is no more. Costello reckons his loyalty deserves more than being treated like this. That bitterness has its own momentum in politics. The whole dynamic has changed, just like that. And it impacts on the Opposition Labor Party, struggling with its issues of disloyalty, destablisation and leadership change.

The wheels turn. A new political cycle begins.

It was but a quiver of emotion in Parliament's blue press room. That's all it was. But the performance will be poured over by the Canberra Press Gallery. They love this playing out of politics. They understand the grand passions, hubris and human tragedy in political life. Screeds will be written about it within the context of the echos of political history of previous battles for the top job.

And Costello? Is he going to re-invent the role of deputy leader by placing the emphasis on a tolerant Australia as well as a prosperous and strong Australia. The implication? That Howard stands for an intolerant Australia----eg., on issues such as reconciliation and Hansonism.

Political theatre. It is political theatre based on everybody reading the tea leaves. But will the play continue with the Canberra Press Gallery putting the PM under scrutiny? Will the PM's gloss become tarnished? Is Costello going to become a countervailing centre of power within the Liberal Party in a low key way?

Act 2 begins after a short intermission.

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May 30, 2003

Driving forward on new policy ideas?

I'm currently glancing through this weeks Bulletin and come across Maxine McKew's lunch with Lindsay Tanner (subscription required) who has the Labor Party's opposition Communications Portfolio.

Tanner is an intellectual politician who wrote a book called Open Australia not so long ago. In the interview he is selling himself as a future leader. Maxine McKew conveniently provides the platform for the product sell.

In the interview he talks about the problems faced by the Australian Labor Party. He says:

"We've got a product problem. That's something thats been building for years. Its reflected in thr threat from the Greens and its reflected it the hollowing-out of our party membership around the country. We've lost our way as a political party. We have to fix that. It means taking risks, being bold, going on the attack. Putting forward strong alternative visions about Australia as it could be under a Labor Government."

Thats a pretty accurate diagnosis. In Tanner's own words the ALP is currently filled with mechanics who fiddle with the engine to make it run. It's lacking in drivers who decide where to go and how to get there.

So how does the ALP move forward? Stop recycling people in the same ideas framework. Embrace change agents, says Tanner. Fair enough.

But as Maxine points out there is nothing coming from the ALP to challenge the Brendan Nelson's user pays reforms to the universities. How would they ensure equity and greater resourcing? As Maxine points out Jenny Macklin, who is in charge of policy development, is not delivering. What ever happened to Knowledge Nation?

We have an ALP on the defensive not one that is bold and beautiful. And it has been on the defensive since 1996. The 1980 ideas of neo-liberal economic reform have run their course. As Tanner would say no robust alternatives have come forward.

There was the initiative on the Murray-Darling Basin in the Budget Reply. An opening perhaps?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 29, 2003

Howard's Way

Howard's reason for going to war with Iraq was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That reason looks thinner and thinner these days. In fact it looks downright misleading as the US finds it ever more difficult to find evidence of stockpiled Iraq WMD.

We now hear that Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, arguing that Iraq may very well have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion.. The logic gets ever more bizarre. There is a discussion here

Howard realised that the WMD argument for war was pretty thin around May, and so he shifted his justification for going to war. Liberation of an oppressed people from a brutal dictator then became the reason. All the war bloggers and journalists dutifully followed suit, swallowed the retrospective rationale without gulping, and started obediently attacking the Left for supporting a brutal dictatorship.

According to these media platoons only the right stood for freedom. The left now stood for totalitarianism. It was a very old line pulled from the Cold War archives and recycled without shame or embarrasment. All the arguments about Australia's national interest were avoided.

Remember all that? It was just before, and around the time, that the troops returned safely and everybody rejoiced in the great victory. Howard was vindicated, yet again. The master politician with the deft touch.

So the legal basis for war is now one in which a sovereign country can be invaded by Australia to save an oppressed people.

So lets invade Indonesia and set the people of Aceh and West Papua free. They are oppressed.

I'm only joking. I know that Canberra won't even put pressure on Jarkata. It wil pretend that nothing much is happening. Canberra will return to accepting the national sovereignty argument.

Don't ya just love the spin? Its all about power: keeping Howard in power.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:58 AM | Comments (3)

May 28, 2003

think tanks needed

There is a story in the Australian Financial Review about Frank Lowy establishing an Australian think tank that focuses on international affairs.(subscription required). He will provide it with $5-6m per year from his own salary ($12m) for 5-6 years. It is called the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

We need more of these. This is too narrow. Its time the Packers and the Murdocks chipped in, don't you think? Help to contribute to the nation's intellectual life by picking up on the American idea of philanthropy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2003

Defending the Senate

Paul Kelly has rightfully put his finger on a key issue in the Australian political system: the role the Senate.

But what a one sided account. He says that:

"... the Senate and its tactic of obstruction looms as the most substantial [issue]since Federation....the Senate's slow throttle of the legislative agenda of the House of Representatives...."

Kelly then asks:

"Is the Senateprotectign the people or denying reforms in the national interest?...... Who does the Senate really represent? Whose interest does it really serve? Has it become the house of sectional, minority and special interests whose main role is to resist Australia's essential transition to the globalised age?"

Well, he has already given his answer. In case you missed the obvious he repeats it:

"The Senate is in the process of undermining the Howard Government. This is the consequence of defeating a legislative agenda, one no government can treat with impunity. So what does John Howard do?"

Australia needs centralized government, resposnible government located in the Hosue of Rpresentatives. The Senate is obstructionist. It needs to be cut down to size.

And Kelly gives this answer without considering Australian federalism with its checks and balances built into the political system. These are between the executive, judicial and the legislative branches of the federal government and between the states and the commonwealth.

True, the Senate is putting the Howard Governments' legislation under review and some oppostional Seantors are threatening to block parts of it. But all Kelly sees is wilful obstruction by the Senate. Nowhere does Kelly give any consideration to the powers of the Senate or to the process negotiation between the executive and Senate which is what has historically happened with the passing of the GST (Democrats under Meg Lees) and the earlier deregulatory industrial relations (Democrats under Cheryl Kernot).

All that Kelly can see is unwarranted blockage and defiance of the executive: it is the Senate is bad for blocking the good reforms of the representative Howard Government. It is a facile understanding of the Senate's role in Australian federalism.

What Kelly does not mention is the concentration of power in the executive and the domination of the executive over the House of Representatives. The legislature does not currently act as a control on the executive, apart from the Senate. It is the contitutional power of the Senate that enables it to counter the way that executive currently manipulates parliament, and through parliament, to manipulate public opinion. The Senate introduces accountability when the executive keeps itself in office by managing (hosing down) its blunders and misdeeds, and so it is less accountable to the public than it ought to be inbetween elections.

As Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate, observes a significant political development:

"....occurred in the 1960s and 1970s with the emergence of minor parties in the Senate. This led to the emergence of the Senate, more or less, permanently not under the control of the majority party in the House of Representatives. That re-introduced into Australia's system of government an element of legislative accountability which had been lost when the party system emerged. We had again the executive being held accountable to parliament in a way that it wasn't in earlier years."

Of course the executive is hostile. Its dictatorial powers are checked. It cannot get its own way. It has to negoitate. And rightly so. As Harry Evans says a geographically-based federalism means that:

"...governments have not been able to rely for long solely on the support of Sydney and Melbourne while ignoring the rest of the country. This has avoided extreme alienation of the outlying parts of the country, in accordance with the main aim of federalism. The fact that the people of the States have voted for the same political parties has not removed this federalist underpinning of the Constitution, although, as has been indicated, the rigidity of the party system has weakened its effect."

Given the current failure of the House of Rpresentatives to make the Executive accountable we should be increasing the power of the Senate not decreasing it.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:56 AM | Comments (7)

May 24, 2003

Little needs to be said

The Governor General should go. He may want to stay in the office; he may see himself as being crucified by public opinion (ie., the mob baying for his blood), and see himself as denied natural justice by the Anglican Church inquiry that criticised his actions in dealing with a previous pedophile scandal and found that found his actions were "untenable" in allowing a known pedophile to continue as a priest.

Christopher Pearson, writing in the Weeked Australian ('Last sex taboo turns sacred', 24 05 2003, p. 18, no link) may dismsss most of this as:

"Sex with minors and adults, especially clergy, has become as national obsession and generated a lot of cant and hypocrisy."

The political reality is that Hollingworth's public reputation is in tatters. He no longer unifies the nation.

He should walk into the night by himself, allow himself to be swallowed up in darkness, do the honourable thing and fall on his sword.

Let the darkness envelop him in his solitude. Nothing more needs to be said.

Addition

There is a good article on Hollingworth by Michelle Gratten here

The Governor-General has resigned

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:23 PM | Comments (5)

May 19, 2003

Is this the case?

This text by Kenneth Davidson is one of the more interesting interpretations of Simon Crean's mapping of the ALP's response to the 2003 Costello Budget. It builds on the more immediate responses.

Davidson says:

"It is about time that MPs began to refocus on the main game - nation-building - which involves reinforcing the nation's social cement as well as its skills and its physical infrastructure."

Is this what Crean is foreshadowing? A return to, and reinventing of, nation building through publicly funded infrastructure and ecological renewal?

By social cement (ugh!) I guess Davidson means social cohesion or the communal ties that bind us as a nation. He says:

"Australia is not so lucky that it can manage to retain a cohesive society while deliberately setting out to create a two-tier health and education system under the rubric of seeking excellence, while looting public infrastructure built up over 200 years."

Many liberals, including lefty ones, do not like the word community, or more correctly communitarian but we do live in a nation under the sign of fraternity as well as liberty. Social cohesion is important, especially when the self-organizing market frays the ties that bind. The conservative response is to reshape social cohesion through the national security state through appealing to fear and anxiety.

Is what Davidson saying plausible? That:

"Simon Crean's budget reply last week [is] the first breach in the neoliberal consensus since Paul Keating won the unwinnable 1993 election against John Hewson's Fightback package of "reforms" - which John Howard has been implementing by stealth ever since he promised to create a "relaxed and comfortable" society in the 1996 election."

Is the ALP on the path to finding alternative ways to renew public infrastructure and foster social cohesion to that of the Howard Government? Are we actually moving into to a public policy situation where there will be real and genuine policy differences?

Or is it still going to the old scenario of Tweddleedum and Tweddleedee with marginal differences in packaging----eg like table salt in the supermarket? Same salt different packaging.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:13 PM | Comments (9)

May 16, 2003

A shooting star?

Like Gummo Trotsky I missed Simon Crean's reply to the Costello budget on telly last night. Too busy getting myself hooked up to broadband. Crean's speech is here for those who like to read set pieces. It was a defining moment. It would have been nice to have seen the performance. Its the performance that counts in terms of establishing credibility.

Two comments. Labor has begun to talk about its own core social democratic convictions. Crean defended the idea of equitable access to health care and education on the grounds of them being public goods. He was strong on Medicare and sidestepped higher education with promises.

The other comment is that Simon Crean committed himself to saving the River Murray--to restoring enough environmental flows to keep the mouth of the Murray open and to restore to water. However, the $150 million down payment is a long way shsort of the $1.5-$2 billion that is needed. Ken Parish concurs.

But figures for environmental flows for the River Murray were actually mentioned---1500 gigalitres over 10 years & 450 gigalitres in the first term of a Crean Government. There was even mention of buying back water licences from irrigators, buying out farmers by RiverBank and recyclingof storm and waste water. The proposed Environmental Flow Trust to manage environmental flows is a good idea, as it takes it out of the hands of the various water authorities (SA Water in South Australia) who have EVERY interest in selling water and NO interest in restoring environmental flows. The trust will ensure that all water savings were used permanently for environmental flows and did not go back to irrigation.

This speech has enough good rhetoric and enough detail to play well in SA and would be welcomed, and talked up, by an embattled Rann Government that is very short on actionable policies to return water to the River Murray in its own state.

Margo Kingston was very impressed. Her heading was Let our rivers flow, says Simon Rightlyso because there was nothing on this issue from Howard at all even though he said water was a key priority of this term of office. Since he actually cut money in the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, water is not a core policy issue.

Simon Crean even went further. He would stop "large and indiscriminate" land-clearing to prevent salinity and commit to legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets by signing the Kyoto protocol. It is too good to be true.

Addition There is a great post on the Murray-Darling at Southerly Buster

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 15, 2003

Return to the past?

I've been thinking about the Howard Government's third term reform agenda in the light of the Costello 2003 Budget that proposes to return future surplus as small tax cuts.With debt being paid for by the sale of Telstra the reform shift in health and education is to a user pays systems. The market is going to the instrument that is used to govern health and education.

If any affordable surplus from future tax growth will be delivered as tax cuts and not in general as spending on public services, then that puts a cap on public spending. So the continuing structural reform will be within the constraints of good economic management. This means there is a shift to the consumer paying more for private services. The new money that is going to go into health and education will come from consumers paying more and for health and education services.

It is a return to the 1993 Fightback policy platform. As Max Walsh points out the health reforms there "proposed that free health care be confined to pensioners and health-care card-holders only." And in 1987, "when Howard first ran for the prime ministership, his health platform proposed the abolition of bulk billing except for the disadvantaged."

Is Howard using his political ascendancy over Labor to push for the "privatisation" of a universal public health and public education system and so create a two-tiered private and public system?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 13, 2003

The Budget: it whimps... but

I've only paid cursory attention to this years Federal budget. I've been too busy worry about the beautiful and constructing my life to accord with the taste dictates of Vogue Living.

My fear is that the budget will have cuts in the grants for scientists just to undermine the building momentum that is making Australia a "smart or clever country." Remember the Howard Government's Howard government’s Backing Australia’s Ability (BAA) program, which supposedly set the scene for being a smart country. It is doubtful if the 2003 Costello Budget will strengthen and broaden this program to enable Australia to join the bottom league of being an innovating nation; or to attract talented Australians overseas to return and join dynamic cooperative research centres bursting with creative ideas, innovative energy and strong commercialisation. Well, the Howard Government once talked that way. Today its a dream

Will the CSIRO will be punished for entering into public policy debates?

I also doubt that Costello's budget will be a deficit one to fund improvements to public infrastructure; or give me hugh tax cuts; fund public health and education; or buy back water licences to save the River Murray. All the signs are, from the headlines I've noted, is that military spending (defence and security) is going to take up oodles of cash; the budget has to remain in surplus; and that the Howard Government lacks the courage to break with economic orthodoxy in the face of declining world economic growth----what economists call the economy being soft!

When the economy is growing they talk in terms of stellar economic performance. No doubt we will hear how great the Australian has been doing due to the wonderful economic management of Costello and Howard.

Surely they are not going to go about needing the surplus to pay off the national debt again? There cannot be much left.

The education reforms? Will they facilitate the shift to a clever, sustainable country? Or are the reforms more about deregulation, user pays (more full feeing places), increased competitiveness, increasing export earnings of international education and allowing regional universities to drift into teaching only institutions.

Addition I caught the budget speech while cooking dinner. A big spin about minor tax cuts----tiny weeny tax cuts to grab newspaper headlines in the morning. Nothing about the environment though. It was not even mentioned---only preserving the cultural heritage of significant sites of national remembrance. Not much long-term green vision there. And there is increased governance of the universities through the deregulated market is the long-term vision for higher education. Of course, there is no research money for philosophers to critique the neo-liberal policy agenda or the lack of drive in the sustainable policy agenda. The humanities will become even more marginalised. Ansd we have lots of promises to spend money many years from now.

Pretty lame and tame all round. Apart from election, election, election.

The faces of the government front bench as they looked at the Labor Opposition said it all. Smugness, arrogance and contempt. They have the federal Labor Party over a barrell. Who would have believed that it is the Liberals have control of the health and education policy fields and it is the Australian Labor Party that is on the defensive and looking for answers.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:05 PM | Comments (3)

May 12, 2003

The G.G. & dirty hands

Well, he had to do something. He has become a moral cripple. He needs to spend 40 days in the desert reflecting on his lapses of judgement, instead of developing strategies to hang onto power and stay put. He really did get dirty hands from his protection of pedophiles during his long climb up the ladder in the Anglican Church. The Report into the past handling of sexual abuse can be found here.

It's a case of dirty hands not the basest political blackmail as Paul Sheehan is trying to argue. The dirty hands have politicized the office of the Governor General. It appears that the current incumbent does not the moral character and civic virtues to unify the nation and articulate its aspirations. Hollingworth says that he aspires to a man for all people. It appears otherwise. And appearances carry a lot of weight in politics.

Michelle Grattan has got it right:

"...that Hollingworth's credibility is shot to pieces because of his handling of pedophilia when Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane. Specifically, he let a priest who admitted pedophilia continue in the ministry."

It is increasingly obvious that Hollingworth does not have the right moral character for the job. Thats the judgement that is being made by public opinion and it is why the G.G. has been on the defensive for the last two years. That flawed moral character is continuing to undermine the very basis on which the G.G operates---public trust and confidence. As Ken Parish says its time to go

But is the current 'standing aside' a clever strategic political move by Howard to retain the G.G? A political fix? This is considered by Alan over at The View from the Right in an interesting post. Alan highlights the political campaign against the G.G. (and John Howard.) However, he fails to deal with the problem of dirty hands in which managers and politicians are involved in situations that require them to commit moral violations to achieve worthwhile goals.

The tense relationship between politics and ethics is addressed here by John Morgan. He says:

"In the Elliot case � which involves child sex abuse by a man before his ordination by another bishop � a pastoral and disciplinary judgment was made, in which it is asserted Hollingworth got the balance wrong. But, the independent report says, it was a judgment made "in good faith". This has gone unacknowledged.... Have we recently decided on matters of sex abuse that unless a strictly legalistic line is followed, condemnation ensues for making a decision and getting the penalty wrong? Or are there other agendas relating to our moral confusion?"

Is there moral confusion here? Its drawing a long blow. It is more a case of dirty hands in which ethics was put aside to protect the church. This means we need to ask: how should we view morally questionable political acts that are done for some good purpose?

Morgan does not address this. He continues with his moral confusion theme:

"Jesus spoke of judgment, repentance, restoration, compassion and care. In dealing with sex abuse, this applies towards victims as well as perpetrators. Some of that is hard to accept � especially in the present legalistic mood. Ways of dealing with wrongdoing or sin of any kind are held in tension within Christian communities...There is hypocrisy and ambivalence in our community in matters involving sexuality.....We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves and ask: What is the moral basis of our own lives as individuals and as a community? Are we so confused that we will jump on any particular campaign wagon and believe the worst of certain people? Are we so confused as to believe that truth is only as we want to perceive it?"

Hardly. Hollingworth handling of pedophilia when he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane is seen to be morally wrong because he let a priest who admitted pedophilia continue in the ministry. It is a morally questionable political act because he did this to protect the Church.

Morgan is saying that it is right sometimes it�s right for a senior bishop to let a known pedophile continue to give pastoral care for the greater good of the church. The contrary judgement is that Hollingworth has done a moral wrong. Its the ethics of dirty hands that is crucial here not the politics of a witchhunt.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 8, 2003

We've heard it all before

Whilst on holiday I missed out on a lot of reading of newspapers. Today I glanced through some back copies of the Financial Review and I could not help noticing that the Howard Government is facing a hostile Senate. The executive is talking about the Senate impeding its ability to govern the country with a strong hand, a double dissolution and using a referendum to reforming the Senate by reducing its numbers and so improve its numbers in the Senate. No talk of doing away with proportional representation though.

This government is becoming ever more uncompromising and concerned with executive dominance. Once again the Senate becomes the battleground around a reform agenda around education, work and family, Medicare and workplace relations. It is a reform agenda that shifts the balance away from the public welfare state to the competitive market subsidised by the state. Is not Howard subsidising the private health funds to the tune of $2.3 billion per year with the 30 per cent tax rebate on private health insurance?

We've been here before. Remember Paul Keating's remark about the Senate being unrepresentative swill? Then, as now, the conflict is about executive dominance.

Then Keating wanted to us to accept high levels of job insecurity as his economic reforms tried to transform everyday life to mirror a competitive market. We had to keep reinventing ourselves to stay employable in a market society. The line then was that education was the big key in the newly-forming knowledge economy. Yet so many graduates could not find work and ended up in low skilled jobs whilst those in full time work worked longer and longer hours.

In one way or another work weighed heavily on our lives in a market economy. during the 1990s. And we became more unhappy and more depressed.

Lets hope this time the Senate stands firm against Howard's attempt to continue to transform Australia into a market society.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2003

Reality check

P. P. (Paddy) McGuinness continues with his attack on the left. He says that:

"...the leftists in the media and elsewhere are doing their best to portray the inevitable chaos following the overthrow of the Baathist regime as the fault of the coalition, and are accusing especially the Americans of any possible offence which might be pinned on them."

The argument of this weblog about stiff Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American military, a big battle for Baghdad and lack of cheering crowds to the liberating forces turned out to be wrong.

The weblog's argument that the US would maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq and that it would face significant Shi'ite opposition is looking to be a plausible one. The Shi'ites see US reconstruction and rebuilding Iraq as occupation, and they want the US out so they can establish an Islamic state. The implication drawn, that the US would not allow the Iraqi people to elect a theocracy in Iraq, looks to be a realistic one.

Raising problems and concerns hardly engaging in efforts to blacken the actions of the US.

And the big suprise from the war? Part of Australia's pay off for being a loyal ally is a juicy free trade agreement FTA) with the US.

The long term consequence of a free trade agreement with the US? Greater integration of Australia with the US. Less Australian culture provided by Australian cultural institutions since Oz content rules would have to go. A reduced ability by the state to deliver core public services?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2003

good ole capitalism

I have refrained from writing about the collapse of some of the major Australian corporations. These more or less speak for themselves--incompetent management and corporate that is the norm in Australian capitalism. But the collapse of HIH is a different kettle of fish. The Report by Justice Neville Owen on the HIH debacle opens up a window onto the dark side of capitalism---what business writers call dubious practices.

HIH was just a vehicle to make money by the bottom feeders. As long as the money could be made these suckers, who called themselves advisors, lawyers and merchant bankers, couldn't care a hoot if HIH turned belly up. HIH was a fee-takes picnic.

There is a classic paragraph in the Moral Hazard article by David Brearley in the Weekend Australian (No link, p. 25, April 19, 2003). It says:

"The greed was spectacular. Everywhere they were men with contempt for others people's money and jyet nothing but lust for money to call their own. They had a disturbing attitude to what they regarded as small sums----anything up to, say, $5million.

Some of them weren't even witnesses before the commission, but merely names that existed in abstract, faceless players in this or that regretable episode. They lived in London or Monte Carlo or maybe some island in the Carribean, and their sole professional function in life was to deal with money-- source it, shift, it, grow it, hide it, work it. These men live in a vacuum." "

The word missing is moral--- ie., capitalism as a moral order. The world of financial capitalism is a moral vacuum. It is nihilistic, as the values of liberal society have long been eroded and emptied out. This is a capitalism that is destructive of liberal society. What are called dubious practices are little different from the actions of a gang of robbers and thieves.

HIH means ithat it is hard to take Hayek seriously when he goes on about the learned morals of the market order that underpins the Great Society. What are the morals that arise from exchange and the marketplace in the HIH case? What are the moral critieria that are necessary for the survival in an impersonal market order? What are the moral rules that the evolutionary logic of the Great Societ has give rise to?

Are the libertarians going to say the responsible individualism of the spontaneous order? HIH indicates that the individualism is little more than the individualism of a bunch of robbers, pirates and looters. Are they going to say that Rodeny Adler, Ray Williams, Dominic Fodera and Daniel Wilkie were striving for excellence, suceeded better than others and deserve great praise?

It is not a case of safeguarding the Great Society from the socialist dangers that threaten it, as Hayek argues. The danger comes from the marketplace. Its a wrecking ball. Libertarians can hardly argue that capitalism lack moral legitimacy because only because the moral ethos of socialism (altruism and solidarity) has been allowed to dominate public debate.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:22 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 19, 2003

There's something going on here

There are lots of online stories about the clash between protestors and police outside the Baxter Detention Centre in Port Augusta where asylum seekers are now housed by the Commonwealth Government.

But there is very little about the Commonwealth's response to the Akram Al Masri judgement by the Federal Court, which declared that the Howard Government could not hold refugees indefinitely when they had no country to return to.

The response by the Commonwealth? To dump 2 Iraqi refugees from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, who were under detention in the Baxter Centre, in the Port Augusta Square at night. They were left there stranded with few possessions. Some had been in detention for over 3 years. They were dumped in the square at night by Australian Correctional Serives officers under instructions from Canberra. This action took place on the cusp of Easter.

No compassion for the refugees was shown at all, even though Australia has just fought a war with the oppressive Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in the name of freedom from a brutal tyranny that controlled its population through fear and torture. Treating Iraqi refugees this way makes a mockery of the Government's reason of fighting the war to free Iraqi people. The Australian Government is indifferent to the wellbeing of the Iraqi people.

There is a long history of this indifference.

So much for the Christian values the Australian neo-cons say they uphold in their defence of the noble Western tradition. They violate the ethos of Christian compassion with every action they take to ensure that refugees are treated as criminals.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:27 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

April 16, 2003

ain't going nowhere

I'm still catching up with the reading of the newspapers. I notice that The Australian reports "that internal ALP polling reveals the party is in dire shape and would lose a string of marginal seats in NSW, Victoria and Queensland."

The article goes on to say that:

"The sharp fall in support for Labor has spooked ALP figures, who are concerned that John Howard will call an early double-dissolution election to exploit his � and the Coalition's � ascendancy....Newspoll shows Labor would lose up to 16 seats, its two-party-preferred support slumping to a 10 per cent gap against the Coalition. The 55-45 per cent projection is a marked deterioration from the 51-49 per cent result at the 2001 election."

A lot of it is internal party squabbling. But there is intellectual feebleness as well since the ALP is not involved in the public; addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question debates about reshaping the Middle East; the geopolitical implications of the war with Iraq; the broader implications of the US dominance of the world orderin terms of Iran and Syria in the Middle East and Indonnesia in the Asia Pacific regions. There is a need for a positive contribution and not just ongoing criticisim of the tendency of the Howard government to join the US bandwagon.

The failure is nerve is being noticed. Thus Maxine McKew in last weeks Bulletin says in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian issue:

"....where is the ALP in this debate? The party's near-total public silence on this is bewildering, all the more so when one considers the role that prominent Labor figures such as Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans are playing on different stages. Both Hawke, through his vast network of contacts, and Evans, from his Brussels-based International Crisis Group, are talking about new parameters for a breakthrough solution."

The world is splintering into those who support the US view of how the world should be run and those who opposed to it. Where does the ALP stand? Constraining the US use of pre-emptive military force? Using the UN to place restraints on US dominance of the new world order?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

Sunshine and shadows

There is an article in todays Australian Financial Review by Tony Harris called, 'Reform has a sunny side' (subscription required, AFR 15 4 2003, p. 70). He is reviewing Michael Pusey's new book, The Experience of Middle Australia.

The book charts our social experiences of economic reform from the 1980s to the late 1990s by drawing on opinion polls, focus groups and responses from between 200-400 'middle Australians'. It unveils the dark side of economic reform: people being worse off; having less security; reduced welfare; negative superannuation returns. The social experience is that middle Australia has carried the unfair share of the 'adjustment burden' of economic change.

Harris's objection is that sociology can only see the downside of reform. We should see the sunny side of the economic reforms. These have increased the overall standard of living and enabled Athe Australian economy to weather economic storms, including the Asian financial crisis and the recent US recession.

Tony Harris leaves it there with his message of a needing a bit of balance---sunshine and shadows. This theme is taken up by Claude Smadja in the Sir Robert Menzies Lecture 2000, 'Living in an Era of Anxious Prosperity. He attempts to capture both sides of economic reform.

He says that things are bouncing along in the world economy quite nicely in terms of prosperity but people are anxious. We citizens are anxious because of the speed of change; a governance vacuum due to the disintegration of traditional political power of the state; and an abdication of governments due to the shift to a smaller role of government.

The response by Claude Smadja, who is the MD of the World Economic Forum,to this state of affairs is twofold. He acknowledges that financial markets create friction, chaos and confusion leading to more backlash and alienation. He then argues that political leaders and goverrnments need to play a more assertive role as the ultimate arbiters among diverse interests in order to ward off endemic social instability. (The state as umpire).

Claude Smadja sums up his core thesis thus:

"And so we are in a situation where we need, in some respects to catch up on the political front and the social front with rapid development that we have seen on the economic and technological front. We need to think a little bit more about new political models that our societies need to put in place to cope with changes."

The 'we' here refers to the big corporations who need to develop some corporate social responsibility. Janet Albrechtson will have none of this "politicizing of commercial enterprises" because "Directors are paid to save the company not the world." However, Smadja, argues that this corporate social responsibility makes good sense in terms of their long term business interests because there is a need to heed off those non-government organizations in civil society who are expressing the concerns of citizens, their anxieities and uncertainities. They are increasingly seen as an alternative to the established institutions of liberal democratic life.

On this account liberal democratic governments are being squeezed by big corporations and activist NGO's. This is especially so in relation to the environment where both government and coporations are on the defensive from NGO's who point out the destructive environmental consequences of economic growth.(eg., the Murray-Darling Basin).

The Howard Government in Australia sees as one of its tasks converting knowledge into jobs and income through a 'can-do community' by harnesssing the creative energy of the people through leadership. An example of this is Landcare. However, this enabling role of government in a globalized world is made more difficult because of the democratic impulse that is now represented by the NGO's in civil society.

In terms of the environment the recognition of the democratic deficit of the institutions of the state becomes obvious at the level of the local action plans. "Harnessing" ciitizens to further the public good does not involve a deepening or broadening of democracy at a time when the River Murray runs dry.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 6, 2003

Wogblog and multiculturalism

The melancholy cultural critic over at a heap of junk for code has a post called good ole wogblog. It responds to the recent criticism of public opinion by the conservative ethnics over at Wogblog who are full on in favour of the war. The cultural critic connects Australia waging a war on Iraq to multiculturalism within Australia.

Wogblog runs the standard line on multiculturalism one of white Anglo-Australians oppressing the migrant ethnic communities. The twist in the conservative ethnic discourse is to attack the [middle-class] left as being full of shit and falling into a moral abyss. This is the left that has historically defended multiculturalism in Australia, initially from the working class exploitation (canon fodder) of migrants, then in terms of an aesthetised cultural diversity, now in the postmodernist terms of representation, difference, identity and the other.

My sporadic reading of wogblog is that it is working class multiculturalism with an intense dislike for left liberals, the chattering class, the academic left and elite cultural types who love their caffe latte. It is of the people.

So what sort of multiculturalism is defended by wogblog.One that has changes working in migrant communities so that there is a loosening up of old ethnic traditions, customs and habits. It is less embattled and defensive; not in the sense of Anglo-American assimilation; rather it is one more open to taking what it useful from Anglo-Australian culture and discarding what is a handicap in Italian culture.

Such a multiculturalism would fracture the conservative discourse that John Howard appeals to, since whatever the minor shifts Howard has made, his contituency has been, and still is, resolutely in favour of assimilation in the name of national cohesion. The effect of Wogblog operating in this conservative discourse would be to undermine--white ant it---from within.

If Wogblog is genuine about multiculturalism in Australia (ie ., not an assimilationist in disguise) then wogblog stands firm with the left in defending defend the Islamic and Arab ccommunities from the institutional racism of Anglo-Australians who despise this cultural difference and see these ethnic communities as potential terrorists. Of course, as is well known, Wogblog hates the left, and so the effect that Wogblog has as a conservative ethnic is to fracture multiculturalism into conservative and left factions and sets them against each other.

Wog blog in short is a trouble maker. A fairweather friend of the national security state.

We can say more though, if we look at the war on Iraq from the perspective of multiculturalism If we do so we see that its got a coloured dimension, which is rarely mentioned. It is mostly white Anglo-Americans fighting brown Arabs. And so Wogblog's fiery war talk places him on the side of the whities who are killing Arab civilians with cluster bombs. And where is the left that Wogblog despises so much? Why using their skills to defend the Iraqi people from the spin about the destruction wrought by Anglo-Americans bombing their country with cluster bombs in the name of freedom.

However, Wogblog has little respect for the left (ie., left liberalism) and dismisses their anti-war arguments, and in junking them as just so much hot air and empty rhetoric, wears the mantel of anti-intellectualism. So maybe the wog in the wogblog is just a mask worn by an old fashioned neocon operating on gut feeling?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:59 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

April 5, 2003

Howard's tactics fail

As the days of the Iraqi regime draw to a close the support for the war has stabilised at around 51%. The war had become more acceptable to the electorate once the shock and awe show started, even if some of that support is soft.

But Howard has failed in his wedge tactics. His conservative constituency that is fearful of immigration, opposes asylum seekers, is worried if not hostile to Islam remains locked in. But Howard hasn't been able to get enough support for the war to use it as a domestic wedge. They tried. Though there is growing support for the Australian troops, it is not for the war or for Australian subservience to the Bush Administration.

Since the broad even split in the electorate blocks wedge the old tactics of bullying, bluff and aggression don't bite. Nor did the old tactic of using Australian personnel fighting a war to hit Howard's so hard that they're afraid to hit back. Neo-cons like Chistopher Pearson can go lyrical about the totalitarian left and cheap anti-war populism in the Weekend Australian (April 5-6, p. 30) but it fails to scare anyone out of uttering any criticism.

The wedge has been such a failure that the Howard Govt is now talking up the the very UN it was trashing a few weeks ago. We need the UN to give legitimacy to the new Iraqi regime. Of course the Bush Administration is having none of this pro-UN stuff. The US will dictate and control the remaking of Iraq and thats that. So how far will Australia go in its dissent and criticism of the US? How far willl it go in asserting a more independent voice?

At this stage Alexander Downer is not doing very much, if we judge him from this quote.Downer made it when he was in Washington:

"....to put the case that in the post-conflict environment we would like to see some UN involvement in Iraq. We've been pleasantly surprised by the very positive reception to that message that we've received from the President downwards. I think the Administration knows only too well that there needs to be some UN involvement."

'Some' UN involvement? Even the Bush administration agrees with some. Only they say 'the some' is very minor. What is the Howard Government's response? Agreement? And what is Downer saying about the US desire to go after Syria and Iran? Is there a big dissent there from Australia? Or is the Howard Government's position not that different to the Bush administrations?
The much loved Miranda Devine has no doubts. She says:

"Better to bring it on now, at a time of our choosing, with all the cockroaches gathered for a showdown out in the open in Iraq, rather than cower at home, our economies shrinking, our civilians picked off, our enemies growing stronger, until we finally wake up to the fact that fighting is necessary, and find it's too late and we are too weak."

Lets have the showdown now, says Miranda.

Has Miranda been watching too many late night cowboy movies from Hollywood? Gianna sorts Miranda out.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2003

thin gruel

The conservatives are not doing a very good job on managing the domestic politics of a war that daily grinds on. Maybe they hope that by sitting tight and avoiding public debate the US-led war will get them across the line in terms of electoral politics. Maybe they hope that the fallout of the war will convulse the Labor Party? Maybe they hope that the shift in the reason for a war from ridding Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction to a humanitarian war to save the wretched citizens of Iraq will do the trick.

Commentators are now beginning to address the longer term consequences of the Iraqi war. The old western alliance is split, Europe is split; the UN displaced and the doctrine of state sovereignty is not sustainable.

What then of the US ordering the world as a hegemonic power as a global policeman? What does Pax Americana necon style mean post Iraq? This obliquely came up on Radio National this morning, when Gerard Henderson was asked about the impact of the neo-cons on the Bush administration. He discounted their influence, without giving any indication of the neo-con theoretical strategic framework which the Bush administration is working within. Let us say kindly that Gerard is out of his depth on the geo-political stuff.

This article by Josh Marshall is what Gerard should have talked about or addressed: the possibility of future chaos in the Middle East due to US neo-con strategy in the region. An bleak assessment for Australia can be found at eye of the eagle.

It was sort of addressed in Geoffrey Blainey's article, Causes for concern. He is celebrated as challenging orthodoxies, questioning long-held assumptions, deciphering history, making it and being able to write well. Blainey has a good opening paragraph:

"Much of the public debate about war and peace is like a debate about malaria in the era before it was realised that swamps and mos�quitoes were the villains. The peace marchers are sometimes like an anti-malarial squad, passing a long swamp on its way to a city square, not realising that the swamp should be its focus. While it is vital that there should be peace movements, it is vital that they should be fighting the correct enemy."

The peace movement is flawed because it singles out one enemy, creed, institution or culture as the main cause of war. With the current war we have simple anti-capitalist and ant-American placard-like theories of war.

Now Blainey is not just deciphering placards in marches. He acknowledges that:

"...most of the Australians who temporarily sympathise with the peace movement are pragmatists, possessed by no grand theory. They simply believe for one reason or other that Australia should not be taking part in today's war. If the United Nations approved the war, however, most of these Australians presum�ably would support it."

However, the:

"...high weakness of the peace movement, in all its manifestations, is that it remains confused about war. It assumes that peace is the normal condition of the world and that if people can only prevent the outbreak of any future war, then peace and stability will reign. But peace can create anarchy just as war can create anarchy."

Then Blainey is of on a history of war, appeasement, Hitler to argue that in "disputes between nations, war remains the ultimate court of appeal. In that sense, international war fulfils a vital function. Only when that elementary truth is realised will a serious attempt be made to replace war."

So the peace movement is a bunch of pacificists. What about those who would support invading Iraq if there had been UN approaval? They are not peaceniks. Blainey dismisses them quickly:

"My own view is that Prime Minister John Howard's arguments in favour of a war in Iraq are stronger than the arguments against him. Indeed, the raggle-taggle United Nations may well be the beneficiary if the war succeeds. But the rightness of any such verdict will depend on the war itself. If the war is short, swift and successful, the leadership by President George W. Bush will seem justified, in the medium term at least."

Why are Howard's arguments better? No reason. They just are. Is it because the raggle-taggle UN is pretty useless? Talk about placard-like theories. Blainey is mixing it with the best of them. Oh, course this is good writing.

Then Blainey is off canvassing the possibilities of a swift clean war. Towards the end he returns to the issue at hand:

"Saddam Hussein, year after year, has made the UN look like a monkey. Ironically those who say they believe fervently in the UN, and who refuse to sanction war in Iraq without UN consent, have unwittingly done their best, in the past weeks, to protect Saddam instead of helping the beleaguered monkey."

To adopt a strategy of the PM's, Geoffrey is entitled to his view. I hear and understand where he is coming from. But its thin gruel. The UN sucks. Nothing about the neo-con view of international relations vs working through the UN.We have all the academic spin by an authority in history who dishes up junk about quitening down the debate and internal criticism of government policy by Australian citizens.

And the swamp? What does the swamp refer to? Is that the anarchy and disorder in world of nations? Presumably, given the refernce to the sparks flying across the Iraqi border sparking violence in other nation states and redrawing the map of the Middle East. However, Blainey says this should not deter the Anglo Americans from intervention and prevention.

He addresses Gerard Henderson's silence on the US neo-con strategy for the Middle East region. Blainey holds his tongue on the US setting out to redraw the map of the Middle East. He does his job by mocking the antiwar movement, discrediting the UN and justifying US occupation of Iraq. Through 'prevention' he legitmates prolonging the war through attaks on other nation states in the name of rooting out Islamic terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. The US neo-con strategy is slipped in under the covers of war being the ultimate court of appeal.

If we come back to this, we find Michael Costello questioning Blainey's prevention strategy: Costello says:

"... the US is going to have to find a way to redefine its way out of its announced policy of unilateral pre-emption, which has so blighted the powerful case for action against Iraq. This doctrine is intolerable to its friends and allies. It is in practice unenforceable. The US is not going to undertake unilateral pre-emption against Iran or North Korea because, despite its awesome military power, the costs of such action would dwarf that of the Iraq war."

I reckon that the neo-cons ae going to get mugged by reality once again. The public debate is pretty thin gruel in terms of the blowback of the war in our region.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:08 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 24, 2003

Driving the wedge

The war in Iraq has been going on for several days. And no attacks on Israel by the Iraqi regime. How come? Wasn't this Saddam guy meant to be itching to dominate the region with military force? Do you think, just maybe, that Iraq doesn't have the military capacity to do so? Or that Israel is the dominate military power in the region? Do you think that there is just a possibility that the Coalition of the Willing and Eager got their public account a bit screwed up?

Ken Parish has a good assessment so far here though it is a little light on the strategic role of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq's game plane. Lisa English over at Ruminate this asks the right question:"So, where are the weapons of mass destruction?" For the role of WMD, given that Saddam Hussein is boxed into a corner with few options, see Tim Dunlop over at Road to Surfdom.

There is another war going on. One is being waged within Australia around influencing public opinion in terms of domestic politics. The conservatives are attempting to use the Iraqi war as part of their wedge politics. Some quick indications.Miranda Devine says that the:

"Anti-war protests made some sense before our troops were committed, so those opposed to Australian involvement in Iraq could send a message to Canberra. But now they just appear to be the futile gesture of sore losers who don't care who they hurt. Protesters should understand they have lost the argument. Whatever your position on the war, the only outcome of continuing activism is to create more discord and division at a time when troops need to know they are supported at home."

Why is this part of a wedge campaign? Because no credence is given to the distinction drawn between being critical of the Howard Government and supportive of the troops as people who are putting their lives on the line for their country. Miranda is not engaging in public debate. This is clearer from Miranda's contempt for her fellow citizens.

" ...anti-war protesters appeared on our TV screens, fired up with their own moral virtue....whether baby boomers trying to relive their youth, anti-capitalist extremists or well-meaning pacifists, they...don't want to hear Iraqi people welcome liberation."

The "hate-filled protestors" will "react to the joy of the liberated Iraqi people ... with silence, most likely, having learned nothing."

I thought that the problem with the anti-war crowd was that there were too humanitiarian, so much so that they were appeasers. Who then is Miranda raging on about. Demons of her own construction?

Why not? Why are the "hate-filled protestors" not fully human? Christopher Pearson (Rebels as gullible as before, the Weekend Australian, 22 03 2002, p. 30) explains all in terms of gullibility. They are gullible because they "believe that the inviolability of Iraq's sovereignty is somehow of more consequence than Saddam Hussein's excesses or those of his regime."

There is no mention of the key role the UN plays in the anti-war account. None at all. Its not much of an argument from the neo-con in residence in Adelaide.

And gullible does not=inhuman, not by any stretch. Gullible suggests human, all too human.

These are such poor argument that they can only be interpreted as merely pretending to be argument in a public debate. They are really weapons used to probe the soft underbelly to drive the thin end of the wedge into the heart of the left. For the US see Tim Dunlop's Instaslur

Back to the other war. Images of wounded Iraqi civilians from Basra are beginning to circulate. And Saddam appears to be boxed into a corner in Baghdad trying to hold out as long as he can and with few options to play. That is not the action of a hegemonic regional power. It is the action of a weak power. Surely, we cannot say that the decade-long containment strategy to keep Iraq from being a hegemonic power actually worked, can we?

So what is Saddam up to then? This Iraq's David and Goliath tactics is one suggestion.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 20, 2003

Wedge Politics

There is an interesting reading of John Howard's political management of the war issue here. In the article Alan Ramsay quotes the pollster Rod Cameron who says that the fundamentals of national politics are begining to change:

"For Australia's best-ever political prime minister, he's now making significant political misjudgements. I mean, what was he thinking of to invoke the Bali victims with the war in Iraq. It's crazy stuff. And I think, despite his frantic searching, he just can't find a wedge in this issue. He has, quite superbly, controlled the political agenda by wedge politics - by dividing the electorate on some emotional issue and forcing the Opposition to side with the moral but unpopular position. But there's no wedge in the Iraq issue. The numbers are now, and will remain, opposed to a war. I think that's true with or without UN backing."

Cameron goes on to say:

"And why I think the fundamentals are changing, is that, OK, he's not getting the wedge, he cannot now win this issue, and yet that's his lifeblood. His whole success as prime minister has been intimately involved with the wider security issue. You know, security/refugees/asylum seekers/immigration/defence. All that is one overarching issue. And now it is changing into, more specifically, war/Iraq/subservience to the Americans. And that is one he isn't winning. And I don't think he can now."

I think this is right. The wedge has not work this time even though it was pushed very very hard by the Coalition government after 9/11. The political strategy of 'war now' through a pre-emptive strike did not connect with the emotional template of the Australian people. The charges of anti-Americanism, appeasement etc that so easily rolled off the lips of the pro-war crowd alienated public opinion.

Using the wedge indicated why Howard did not engage in public debate or blocked all attempts by Australian citizens to be involved in policy discussion through arguing which course of action is best for Australia. All that John Howard is willing to grant is that Australian citizens have a right to express their opinion. Since he blocks our participation in the process of making a decision about Australia going to war our right to express our opinions is little more than a whistling in the dusty wind.

A commitment to democracy is not one of John Howard's strong points. We citizens are left to dissent from an already agreed upon position--being part of the US posse----rather than contributing a policy option to the public discussion. John Howard makes an announcement after visiting Washington and that's policy. Alexander Downer then elaborates the announcement. Thats how policy is made. All we citizens can do--the only option granted us--- is to agree or disagree with it.

That is not much of a democracy. So we fight to be a part of the process of policy formulation. We reject the limited conception of democracy of the Prime Minister.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:05 AM | Comments (1)

March 19, 2003

Political signifiers

I did not see the debate in federal parliament in Canberra yesterday afternoon over the war. Like other citizens I read about it in the newspapers this morning when I finished reading the speeches. What struck me about this parliamentary debate was a little detail: the action of John Howard, the Prime Minister, turning his back on Simon Crean whilst Crean was delivering his speech.

Okay, it was not a good speech by Crean. Too negative and polemical as usual. Crean needs new speech writers. Maybe they could read this one by US Senator Robert Byrd, We stand passively mute. The phrase I used in the previous post, "sleep walking through history" comes from this speech of Wednesday 12 February 2003. What was missing was spelling out the alternative suggested by the Doc. Evatt heritage in the Australian Labor Party over and above the need for a new UN resolution. Not even Bob Hawke delivered this. His argument was about the lies and deceits that litter the road to war.

The UN tradition within social democratic parties was expressed by Robin Cook's Why I had to leave the cabinet speech. He says that that the national interests of regional powers are "best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules."

So consider what Howard's backturning---some reports say it was turned with a gesture of contempt---signifies. This was more than rudeness or political theatre. It signified 'its all fait accompli':we have signed up to conflict with the Bush administration that has an agenda of its own. Their agenda is our agenda. It signifies an indifference to public debate when the ALP Opposition and the majority public opinion are against war without UN support.

Howard's backturning signified rejection of Australia's foreign policy being centred on support for an international community based on binding rules and institutions at worst; or, at best, a setting aside of an international community based on binding rules and institutions becuase the UN produced a result that was inconvenient to us.

Howard trning his back with contempt whilst Crean was speaking signifies the reality that Australia is now embarking on a war without an agreement in the international bodies of which we are a responsible member. That is taking part in a military adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies of the western alliance. It signifies diplomatic isolation including diplomatic isolation from the other nation states in the region.

It's all in the detail as they say----in the political contract as well as the commercial contract.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:25 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2003

Wilkie Resignation

The argument of Andrew Wilkie, the former Intellligence officer at Office of National Assessments, goes to the heart of the issue. His arguments confirm the position of this weblog that, as Australia's national interest is not threatened by the Iraqi regime, we have no reason to go to war. It is a US war led by the White House.

Wilkie says that Iraq does not pose a security threat to the US, or to the UK or Australia, or to any other country, at this point in time; that he could see no evidence that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq; and that war with Iraq increases the risk of the Iraqi regime lashing out recklessly and using weapons of mass destruction and to possibly play a terrorism card.

Wilkie's judgement is that it is a foolish war that could lead to disaster, and that we have good reason to fear the consequences of this war. His reasons would be based on the high-level intelligence assessments which provide the information base for policy formulation by the federal government. It is a judgement based on the view that Saddam Hussein has, and is concealing, weapons of mass destruction to some degree.

Wilkie's argument is a critical response to the arguments used by the Howard Government for why it should go to war with or without UN approval. This raises the question: does the Howard Government have the evidence to justify their position? Or did they make a political decision and then hunt around for the evidence to justify it?

My judgement is the latter was what happened. My reasons? First, The Howard Government has never provided convincing evidence; the evidence that it has used is interptretation of the work of others eg., the inspectors reports to the UN. Secondly, Wilkie confirms the view of a leaked high-level British intelligence report that leaked to the BBC about a month ago they had no evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. And lastly, the purpose of war constantly changes: from regime change; from it being a part of the war against terror; and then rolling out Western democracy from Iraq through the Arab world.

What we have is a political decision based on the acceptance of American hegemony, pre-emptive strike, preventing China from equalling the US in military power rejection of UN contraints of US power to further national self-interest. The war is being driven by the White House not by the evidence gathered by the US, UK and Australian intelligence community. What evidence there is is being used by the politicians to justify a political agenda.

Wilkie's argument strengthens the case that the threat Iraq does present to the region can be contained. This was the view of the head of the CIA, George Tenet, who told Congress last year that Iraq can be stopped from using its weapons of mass destruction without needing to attack it.

Not that you wil not see the Howard Government ministers respond to Wilkie's arguments. They will dismiss Wilkie as a person of little relevance. They are more concerned with putting out the bushfires and managing the politics than engaging in public debate. All John Howard does is say that he has taken the pro war stance because it is right. Why right?

"We have taken the stance we have because we believe very much that it is right. I don't want this country to live in a world in which rogue states like Iraq are able to retain chemical and biological weapons and continue to aspire to the development of nuclear weapons."

Neither do we John. But that does not address the containment versus war options. For the PM containment is displaced because the choice is either appeasement of Sadam Hussein or disarming Iraq through war. Instead of engaging the PM is just selling a message. Nothing more. Tony Blair, in contrast, is engaging in a public debate with his fellow citizens.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:06 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 5, 2003

Tony Abbott discovers he's human

I see that Tony Abbott, the federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, admits that he has made a mistake. In the early 1990s this one nation conservative defended the position taken Geoffrey Blainey and John Howard in the immigration debate. Both had argued that the proportion of Asians as part of Australia's total migrant intake should be reduced and both opposed multiculturalism.

Abbott called for a reduction in Asian immigration, saying that Australia "will be about 10 per cent Asian" by 2005 and stated that the policy of multiculturalism would result in Australia becoming a "pastiche of cultures". Abbott also effectively called for a test for Australian-ness, namely, a society that "studies Shakespeare, follows cricket and honours the Anzacs".

In this Convergence speech Abbott dismissed the need for any test of "Australian-ness"; recognised that "there's hardly an extended family, these days, which doesn't include people of quite different backgrounds and ethnicities"; praised multiculturalism as facilitating this convergence; and declared that "paradoxically, Australia has turned its very diversity into kind of unity".

Wow. The Minister has discovered Hegel---unity in diversity. Very dialectical. This is venturing onto dangerous ground for a senior government Minister. Dialectics is a wild beastie as all the power is in the underground workings of the dynamic negative.

Can we say that Tony Abbott's 'seeing the light' of multiculturalism is an example of one nation conservatism being mugged by reality?

What does that mean for one nation conservatism of the national security state?That the unity bit keeps the diversity bit under control? What if the diversity bit includes Islam, as it does in Australia? Are we repelling them from our borders in the name of national security? Don't we, of the unity faction, reckon that diversity is a cover for terrorist sleeper cells? My judgement is that the unity bit will not embrace diversity to the extent of celebrating Australia as a multi-nation liberal state. The fortress bit of unity will overwhelm the diversity bit.

Now that he has discovered he is a sensitive human being, and not an attack dog machine who savages the unemployed within the protected walls of Parliament, maybe the Minister might dvelp a different comportment. Some advice. He could start by expressing some sympathy for unemployed people, understanding their difficulties they have in reinventing themselves in a globalised world; and remove some of the obstacles the government places in the way of them getting back into the workforce.

Then, as an ex-trainee priest, the Minister could begin to address the social costs of the ongoing economic reforms from a Catholic ethical perspective of Rerum Novarum:On the Condition of the Working Classes of Pope Leo XIII (1891). Since the Minister is busy the Minister he could turn to this blogspot for some suggestions. It would help the Minister to put a bit of backbone into the Howard Government's third term social reform agenda.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:31 PM | Comments (3)

They did it their way

The Australian Financial Review is running a series of articles on the economic reforms undertaken by the consensus Accord politics of the Hawke-Keating Labor Government. These reforms of the 1980s-1000s aimed to internationalise the economy and they included: floating the dollar, deregulating the banking system, removal of tariffs, a shift from centralised wage fixing to decentralised wage fixing, reforms to welfare higher education, superannuation, public health telecommunications and competition policy.

The first article by Laura Tingle, 'Hawke & Keating: architects of a revolution', (AFR, 28 Feb.2003, pp. 1, 80-81, subscription required) sets the tone. It adopts the perspective of the political revolutionaries. They see themselves as blowing open the business establishment, challenging the ideas that had dominated Australia since Federation, and fundamentally changing the economic and political landscape. They see themselves as political heroes. They had understood that reform was long overdue due to the decline in the terms of trade that had started in the mid 1960s;knew that the changes had to be profound; they had the courage to act, and they delivered the required reforms.

What was the point of the reforms? To create a competitive economy, increase economic growth, ensure profitablity and provide jobs. They delivered. They will be judged favourably by history. That is the judgement of the Financial Review. Inequality caused by a competitive market economy is dismissed; the environment is not mentioned; and unemployment is gestured only in terms of 'creating new jobs'. Big reforms required that a few eggs had to be broken but the strongest survived the big adjustment in the economic environment.

What do we interpret all this to mean as a way of writing history? What sort of history is this if the big failure is seen to the 1990-1991 recession, not long-term unemployment caused by structural adjustment?

This is is neo-Darwinian history written by the winners. According to the third article by Alan Mitchell (March 3, 2003, pp. 1 & 60), this period of dazzling economic reform to transform Australia from a sheltered industrial backwater into an open dynamic economy was a barrel of thrills and spills.

These reforms, which changed the Australian economy forever, are helping to derive economic growth through rapid productivity growth and businesses expoerting to Asia. What counts in this history is the judgment of global financial and foreign exchange markets who are hostile to wage justice, equality and all round protection, and couldn't care less about environmental sustainability or social justice. The end of public policy is creating a competitive economy and ensuring economic growth.

And if the spills are seen as human casualities? Not just the smooth-talking entrepreneurs who were there one minite and gone the next. I mean the ordinary people who lost their jobs. Well, they they have no real voice in this history about The ALP being ' the party of superior economic management 'and saving the economy from becoming a banana republic before time ran out.

This is a neo-liberal history that is strong on the thrills for economists and weak on the spills for ordinary citizens. The love of reform of the Hawke-Keating has been lost. The current Labor Party has lost its stomach for reform. So the achievements of Hawke and Keating should be celebrated. Mistakes are acknowledged in this neo-liberal history: the 1990-91 recession; aboriginal affairs; not delivering on a consumption tax; failure to continue with privastation and labour market reform and lack of corporate regulation. But the big picture is that these reforms have set Australia up to ride the rollar coaster of globalization and to hook into the gfuture rowth of the Chinese economy.

This is the sort of historical narrative the Financial Review would run goven its concern about the economy. But other stories can be told. Paul Kelly notes that the shift to a competitive market economy is also a shift to a more individualist society; a shift away from the state to individual rights; a shift away from a traditional high culture to a market consumer culture.

But there was not a shift to a more ecologically sustainable society or economy. That was the big failure. But it goes unmentioned. That part of the 1980s has been quietly forgotten.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:42 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 21, 2003

Have you noticed?

There is a lot of hot air around the war on Iraq. Most of the pro-war crowd are saying that they are fighting the good fight in attacking Iraq. And some are developing the 'good' bit by advancing humanitarian reasons of liberating an oppressed people from a totalitarian regime. And the left are saying that they are fighting the good fight by trying to block the 'war now' course of action.

If you stand back a bit from the fray and let the words that are being used as weapons fly over your head, then you notice something else going on. The neo-con hawks 'for war' position focuses on the future danger that Iraq will obtain nuclear weapons. The Hawks worry that Hussein will use WMDs or give them to terrorists in the future, to be used against the west on their home soil. Hence the pre-emptive strike.

Then a switch is pulled and a lot of the neo-criticisms of the left and the protest marchers are really more a part of a war on the left than any war on terror. It is the culture wars under another name that are being fought here. Even old time social liberals are getting in the act. The left, in the words of Paul Kelly are on a Craven trudge to a moral morass. The protesting left, says Kelly, are blind to the moral consequences of their position of non-intervention and denying the legitimacy of US-led military pre-emption to liberate Iraq. The moral consequences are the consignment of the Iraqi people to a gulag of deprivation, decline and imprisonment.

Did I miss something in the din of the battle? I cannot remember hearing Howard talk about liberating Iraq when he graced Washington with his presence. All I remember is the PM talking the language of national security and national interest.

And then we get this from Kelly:

"Who do the peace-marchers represent? They represent only themselves. One serious mistake some of them make � including some of the Christian churches � is to claim to speak for the Iraqi people. Such claims have no foundation and are quite dishonest."

I seem to recall that public opinion which had formed was based on the argument that Australia should work through the UN rather than outside it. This argument is made from the within the tradition of H. V. Evatt, Australia's UN diplomat. We should support the UN whilst being a critic of the UN, the Security Council, the power of the founding big five nations within it and the use of veto power. On Evatt's reading of history the cataclysm of World War It meant that on such matters as military intervention in the affairs of a nation state the great powers needed to act as one. Hence the importance of veto power. France is quite right to use thsi power to slow things down.

It is clear that many are more interested in discrediting/destroying the left than in prosecuting a war on terror. They reckon that this rhetorical battle needs to be won in order to facilitate the war on terror.

Have you noticed the change in tactics? Tim Dunlop has in his Starting to crack post on John Howard saying that lefty protesting citizens are giving comfort to the enemy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 20, 2003

The third way in SA?

Parliament is back in business in South Australia for a few days. It is here today and gone tomorrow. The Rann Government is still on a honeymoon, even though it keeps on sending out bulletins warning about tough budgets and ever more cuts to public services; the Liberals are still in disarray and the Democrats nowhere to be heard.

The Rann Government's tacit claim is to further the third way-- a green wash, the knowledge society, innovative entrepreneurism in the fields of biotechnology and bioscience---and releasing us from the burdens of our history. Does it represent the renewal of the left? A way forward from the traditional right (meaning neo-liberalism) and left (social democracy Don Dunstan style) that captures the best of both?

Is the Rann Government the new centre? A southern spark of creativity that spills over into all manner of high-tech applications, communal brain trusts, and a self-confidence in its own smartness and capacity to enable innovation across a wide variety of different sectors and fields.

Thats an intoxicating vision---its that of Jane Lomax Smith who is Minister for Science and Information Economy. It is one that rejects an aping of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; one in which the social democratic left has learnt to love the market, is comfortable with the market and sees no need to manage capitalism in the time-honoured fashion. 'Cool new SA' is a creative response by a regional economy to the global market. It is about creating a dynamic knowledge eocnomy.

Is the image and gloss looking a bit thin; or a bit tatty and ragged with all the budget cuts, fear of the discipline of the global market and basic acceptance of neo-liberal economics. Does this mean that there is little room for manoeuvre for the Rann Government?

Do we see Thatcherism pursued by more softly softly means? Competition with compassion? Efficency and solidarity? Profit and community? Does this equate to a neo-con moral conservativism--tough on drugs, tough on law and order etc?
Do we see in the joining of economic liberalism with conservative social policies that is repelled by authoritarian populism?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:40 PM | Comments (2)

February 19, 2003

A Big Thanks to the war crowd

The 'lets wage war on Iraq now' crowd surged through public opinion for a moment, stopping by to drop some of their concerns in the comments box on the Anti-Democratic sentiments post. They took great exception to my gentle political teasing of the noble and witty Tim Blair, who is so witheringly scornful of the absurdities of the left.

Thanks folks. It was good of you to give up your precious time and energy in waging war against the enemies of the state to read my humble blog. You delivered far more than I ever dared hoped for -- an insight into the political unconscious of Australian conservatism. The fragments are there for all to see and interpret.

I had initially raised the idea of the conservative political unconscious in Anne Coulter & the US Gaze in relation to the US. There I mentioned the politics of blind fury as one pathway to understanding the deep drives of the lets go to war now crowd on the street. I described this politics as:

"what sits underneath the American patriotic narrative of innocence underseige by the Third World, the surge of patriotic pride and the going back to the basics. We can begin to get a grasp on this 'blind fury' if we see it as an aggressive stance of retaliation within Fortress America to the unspeakable Evil from the threatening Outside?"

I added that the politics of blind fury could also be "interpreted as a paranoiac acting out; a paranoia that refuses to include itself in the picture other than as an innocent gaze confronting a diabolical evil."

I had another go in a post on philosophy.com, called Absolute freedom and terror. By absolute freedom I meant a:

"blind fury that is willing to destroy what stands in its way. What it constructs as its opposite----that which has to be fought and destroyed ----is a negative, which is called terror. A war has to be unleashed on terror. Terror must be destroyed. What this gives birth to is a self-destroying reality. So we have a dialectic of absolute freedom and terror and this makes for dark times."

See the coments for the interesting and informed responses.

At the time I had no idea whether the political unconscious politics of blind fury applied to Australian conservatism. I did consider that it would be possible to map US and Australian political unconscious through the neo-con conservatives. But the comments to the Absolute freedom and terror post put paid to that. The political unconscious of conservatism took us outside the horizons of liberalism into something quite different.

Now I have some understanding of the political unconscious of Australian conservatism. What can I discern apart from the usual dualistic division of the world into goodies and baddies, the might is right conception of justice, and the critics of the war have no arguments on their side?

If you read the comments in theAnti-Democratic sentiments post you can see the politics of blind fury. My kind are the Other (grubby, disgusting,needing to be flushed down the toilet). The terror of the sword can be seen in the statement about my kind would have to be shot in the head if we gain any sort of power. You can see the absolute freedom in the reaction to my suggestion that the UN should act as a contraint on the power of a hegemonic US--there should be no restraint at all--that is statism and 'socialist junta of hostile foreign powers overwriting the US constitution. You can see the totalitarianism in the remark the 'your kind [inferior weaklings] are born to be slaves and lick the boots of the strongman.'

So thanks folks for allowing me to see the violence of your political unconscious. It is much appreciated as we have the beginnings of a political language, one that has yet to articulate its concerns in the language of rebellion, sedition and treason.

It is one that fails to understand that the lefty leaders/speakers, such as Pilger and Brown are sufficiently skilled in oratory and rhetoric to win over the people marching against the war. Are these persuasive speakers now seen as the architects of rebellion?

I reckon that these folks have a big problem with my kind being allowed to speak and act the way we do in our liberal democracy. That means they have a big problem with a liberal political order per se.

Since I need to do a bit more reading to overcome my ignorance of international relations I'll do a bit of digging around in Joseph de Maistre's politics of the inquisition and report back. I promise.

Meanwhile we could have some fun reading of the US street in Francestinks.com

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:43 PM | Comments (9)

February 17, 2003

Authoritarian logic

Australian citizens are now marching against John Howard's war with Iraqi. The rainbow expressions of the carnival have been counterposed to the authoritarian logic of the US war machine.

The Prime Minister rejects the claim that it is his war. He was quoted on Radio National this morning as saying that he still does not believe those citizens who marched represent the majority view.

Mr Howard's account of the events, as has told Channel 9's 60 Minutes is that most Australians realise the need to deal with Iraq. In this interview John Howard says:

"The one constant in all the polls is that people think that Saddam Hussein has got dangerous weapons. They don't believe him and they think something ought to be done," he said.

"I don't think the mob, to use that vernacular, has quite made up its mind on this issue and it can't really make up its mind until we know what all the alternatives are."

The 'mob' Prime Minister? A Freudian slip? Democracy as the mob? That conservative language sits up a collision between the Australian government and Australian citizens. John Howard reinforces this when he adds that, "If my critics are listened to, the world will turn its back on the problem."

Really? Aren't the critics saying that the UN inspectors should be given more time and resources to do their work?

And those nation-states who are not convinced of the need for war by Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation to the National Security Council? What are they? Appeasers?

The Prime Minister says that we have to act on our obligations under the Anzus alliance even though the US is not attack. Why? Because 'there is only one country that can help with us to guarantee our security and that is the US.'

Prime Minister, are you saying that we ought to go to war with Iraq for the sake of a special (insurance) relationship between Australia and the US?.

I thought that we go to war when Australia's security threatened? Now it is threatened by the threat of violence and terror that is borderless. But how does Iraq fit into this?

It is based on a series of risks---what ifs---says the Prime Minister:

"....when you know that a country has chemical and biological weapons and wants nuclear ones, when you know it is like Iraq, when you know that, if they are not disarmed, others will aspire to do the same, and when you know that the more they have them, the more likely it is that terrorists will get hold of those weapons, you've got to do something and, if you don't, I think you could end up paying a much greater price further down the track."

This is authoritarian logic. That is why there is only a faint hope for peace in this mantra. It is the sheer mediocrity of the arguments that is what is most amazing. And the evidence presented is unconvincing according to the standards of presenting evidence in a court of law.

Why? Why the poor script?

Howard has locked himself into the trajectory of the war machine and he has no control over it. He has little choice now. So he is forced to ride the groundswell of public opinion and confront it with the closed universe of an authoritarian logic. That logic now sounds like a crazy parody in the hands of some of our media commentators. In contrast, the D'hage report's 'View from Istanbul' has its feet grounded in a conversation in civil society.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:59 AM | Comments (13)

February 13, 2003

Executive Dominance

John Quiggin says it very well in this article, "No alternative for Telstra', in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required ) column. (Feb. 13, p.62), The article is about burying the Telstra parliamentary inquiry. John says:

"What was unprecedented, as far as I know, was the decision of the majority on the committee lead by Christopher Pyne, and acting on the orders of Communications Minister Richard Alston, to kill the inquiry altogether. No evidence was taken and submissions were cut off, marking another milestone in the growth of executive contempt for parliament, and in the decline of the committee system."

So true John. So true. So executive dominance has to checked and balanced?

The ALP has the same executive contempt for the Parliament, the Senate and the committee system when it has its hands on the levers of power. Parliament needs to be reformed to strengthen its power vis-a-vis the executive, increase the power of the Senate and make the committee system more authoritative. This would deepen the federal underpinnings of a liberal-democratic institutions.

Which major political party is going to do that? Don't hold your breath for a deepening of Australian federalism.

Now a case can be made. As Jacob Levy at The Volokh Conspiracy (9.58am February 10th) accurately observes:

'....in practice, the U.S., Australia, and Germany seem to show that an upper house in some way dependent on federalism is a pretty stable solution that can offer real counterbalancing to the lower house and/or the executive.'

In a latter post that day( 2.03pm) he seem to backtrack from a federal understanding of the Senate. Jacob notes the recent 'no confidence' motion passed by the Australian Senate in the Howard Government. He says:

'I've never heard of a motion of no confidence even being introduced into the House of Lords or the Australian Senate or the Bundesrat; because "no confidence" from such a body is just venting. It lacks the constitutional significance of "no confidence" from the house to which government is responsible.'

Venting? This is more than venting. That institutional rebuke is giving expression to a faultline that is developing in the body politic about the Howard Government's handling of a war that a majority of Australians will not consent to without a UN mandate. Venting implies being powerlessness. However, the Australian Senate is a powerful political institution and the political significance of Senate's "vote of no confidence" is more than being just a form of rebuke that has no constitutional meaning, but sounds mighty fancy.

In a federal system a motion of no confidence does mean something-- even if it is not the rejection of the ministerial government by the parliamentary body of the House of Representatives as it is in a purely Westminister system. In a federal system the House of Reps is not the sole arbiter of the approval or disapproval process. In a checks and balances federal system the Senate acts to check the power of executive dominance, that is currently being deployed by the Howard Government to run the war. Its the checks and balances that goive the action its constitutional meaning.

Michael Jennings differs from this account. He has some background material here (scroll down to Monday, February 10). His latter comment on the Senate's no confidence motion here (Tuesday Feb.11) acknowledges that 'the senate does actually have the power to bring a goverrment down, if it really wants to flex its muscles'. He then quickly qualifies this:

"The present government is a right wing government. The people in the senate who voted their "motion of no confidence" the other week are typically from the left. While they could conceivably bring down the government by withdrawing their consent for money bills, they are committed to never do this for historical reasons. Whereas they could in theory withdraw their actual parliamentary confidence in the government and bring it down, this is for them unthinkable. Therefore, instead, they pass completely spurious "motions of no confidence" that are not really what they claim to be."

I would not be too sure of that. Political conventions do change. What is mor elikely to happen is that Howard will trim his sails & go for war with a UN mandate, rather than have a collision with the Senate.

More power to the Senate I say. We need more checks and balances not less. And this may be what is happening behind our backs, due to the war with Iraq. Contrary to the recieved wisdom of most journalists in a federal system the Senate is the place to watch, not the House.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:16 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

February 6, 2003

Tim Blair's Howard paradox.

I glanced through The Bullettin today and came across noted Aussie weblogger Tim Blair. Tim now has a column (link by subscription only) on the absurdities of life plus his weekly take on local and international issues. The column is called The Continuing Crisis ... with a phot of Tim scratching his head with a bemused smile on his face. This weeks column is entitled, 'The roar of Babylon' and it has a good go at Carmen Lawrence for her anti-war stance.

My eye was caught by this paragraph called, The Howard Paradox. It is a mixture of Tim's weekly take on national issues and the absurdity of life. According to Tim, The Howard Paradox is:

"...an Australian political phenomenon in which the prime minister [John Howard]is vilified by commentators when he follows popular opinion (in the case of the asylum-seekers) and condemned when he opposes public opinion (in the case of a war against Saddam Hussein). The Howard Paradox is out of play only when the majority of commentators agree with him (in the case of gun laws)."

Clever and witty. Shoves it up the pompous left liberals good and proper. It makes them look such mugs. The journalist as gadfly firing arrows at the left liberal hatred for John Howard. And all done in a paragraph.

Too clever by half Tim. You need to slow down, take time out and give some energy to pondering the national issues you pick up. Its not a paradox. John Howard is not being criticized for opposing public opinion in the case of the war with Iraq.

The Prime Minister is being criticized for the way he is handling the Iraqi war issue across the broad spectrum of public opinion, including from within his own party. The judgement is that he is not managing it well because he is seen to have overstepped the mark. He is seen have both signed up to Bush's war long ago, and for Australia to go to war with Iraq without a UN mandate. But he is pretending otherwise. So he is seen to be untrustworthy on this issue. It is a question of trust

There is a whole story on this by Laurie Oaks called 'Wedge of Reality', and unfortunately for Tim, it is on the opposite page to Tim Blair's column. Oaks tacitly undermines Tims' Howard Paradox.

What Oaks argues is that Howard has a credibility problem. This is it in a nutshell:

"Part of Howard's credibility problem hinges on his insistence that, although he has sent Australain forces to join the Americans in the Gulf, no final decision has been made to join an attack on Iraq. The Americans know it is a fiction, and hardly bother to pay lip service to it. Australian voters are not fools: they know it is nonsense too. The idea that Howard would say, "Sorry George!' and bring the troops home again is simply risible."

So much for Tim Blair's paradox.

What we have is a contradiction in the Prime Ministers position. Howard needs the UN to give a mandate to war with Iraq to regain his credibility. But Howard and his Ministers have spent most of the year attacking the authority of the UN--bashing the UN. They have done so in the name of Australia's sovereignty and Australia making its own decisions on national security issues.

As I noted earlier Tim Blair is being too clever by half. The voices speaking about war with Iraq are anything but the roar of Babylon.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:43 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack