The reality is not crushing debt and budget emergencies. Neoliberal philosophy holds that all welfare recipients are “bludgers” and all taxpayers are “battlers”. The Abbott Government's position is that taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for another person’s livelihood, particularly if that livelihood comes from pensions or other transfer payments.
The welfare state is the problem, not its beneficiaries. For neo-liberalism it is unfair that cleaner, a plumber or a teacher is working over one month full-time each year just to pay for the welfare of another Australian. Hence the rhetoric of lifters and leaners. The war that the neo-liberals in the Abbott Goverment are waging is the destruction of the welfare state.
]]> That war explains the paradox of neoliberalism wanting to limit government, but the upshot of their policies being a huge expansion in the power of the state. Shrinking the welfare state is proving politically impossible in Australia so neoliberals have turned instead to using the state to reshape social institutions on the model of the market - a task that cannot be carried out by a small state. An increase in state power has always been the inner logic of neoliberalism, because, in order to inject markets into every corner of social life (including health, education and the arts) a government needs to be highly invasive.Using the welfare state to realise an ideal of social justice is, for neoliberals, an abuse of power: social justice is a vague and contested idea, and when governments try to realise it they compromise the rule of law and undermine individual freedom. The role of the state should be limited to safeguarding the free market and providing a minimum level of security against poverty. They opt for a minimal welfare state, which aims to prepare people for the labour market rather than promoting any idea of social justice.
]]>The bill gives intelligence organisations the power to access personal computers and the "entire Australian internet" with a single warrant. These powers don't go far enough since ASIO also wants mandatory data retention laws for telecommunications and internet service providers.
LeunigMore specifically, the legislation just passed allows ASIO to use third party computers and networks in order to hack the target of a computer access warrant; a measure the government has argued is necessary because of increasing technical sophistication among surveillance targets. The legislation also changes the definition of computer for the purposes of warrants to "one or more computers", "one or more computer systems", "one or more computer networks", or "any combination of the above".
Journalists and whistleblowers (such as like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning) will now face up to ten years in gaol if they disclose information about "special intelligence operations" (SIO) (and whether any particular operation is an SIO will itself be kept secret). There is no “public interest” defence. The spooks get what they want from the politicians.
]]> All efforts to introduce safeguards in the form of reporting requirements, sunset clauses and public interest immunity were rejected by both the Coalition and Labor. An amendment secured by the Palmer United Party to actually increase the penalty for identifying an intelligence officer from one to ten years' imprisonment. Only the Greens, Leyonhjelm, John Madigan and Xenophon refused to support the amended laws.Scott Ludlam fought hard to keep the debate going, and moved a series of amendments that would have protected journalists and whistleblowers, wind back some of the broad new computer warrant powers and increase oversight of ASIO.
The threat of terrorism to Australia has been greatly exaggerated. The idea that IS can attack Australia from its bases in Syria and Iraq is a fantasy and a deliberate scare mongering by the government aided and abetted by the national security media. This evokes an imagined fear, which is then vindicated by an actual event--eg., the shooting death of an 18-year-old so called "terrorism suspect" (Abdul Numan Haider) and double-stabbing of police officers in Melbourne. The Abbott government then plays the counter-terrorism card hard to maximise their chances of re-election.
They are ably supported by the tabloid mainstream media with its expansive media coverage. The right wing white supremacists---eg., the Australian Defence League (ADL) and the Christian right who are determined to prevent the construction of mosques in Australia--- are then emboldened in their attacks on Muslims. This fits in with the more generalised pattern of abuse and intimidation which Muslims in Australia have been subjected to since the inauguration of The War on Terror in 2001
The overwhelming police response so far is aimed at members of Australia’s Middle Eastern, Muslim minority and that the white supremacist, bigoted racist wallies who want to burn mosques and attack young Muslim women in the street, are being left to foment their own special kind of trouble.
Giving more and stronger powers – of arrest, detention, investigation and interrogation of suspects – to the police and ASIO represent steps towards an authoritarian government.
]]>Does Australia step into help the Iraqi Kurds? Australia was only meant to be involved in Iraq not Syria, according to the Abbott Govt at the invitation of the Iraq Government. On the other hand, Abbott has said that Australia was committed to containing and degrading and destroying Isis to combat the threat posed by the IS terrorists. Does that mean there will be military action in Syria without the Syrian Government's cooperation? You don't send in the SAS to run humanitarian missions.
Ron TandbergThere is little acknowledgment by the Liberal party that the 2nd Iraq war had been "wrong", that Australia went to war under false pretences in Iraq, and that the destruction of Iraq has resulted in the emergence of IS, homegrown terrorism and Australians participating in terrorist activities in Iraq. For the Liberal party there are no lessons to be learned from the errors of the past, because there were no errors and there were no disastrous consequences of the previous military interventions.
]]> Australia must stand tough and muscular with respect to its duties and obligations on the international stage. Cue Abbot striking his Churchillian pose of the grave demeanor and resolute tone to show that he is purposeful, unyielding, and courageously ready for the fight.The United States and allies have launched airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria , unleashing a cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs from the air and sea on the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, and along the porous Iraq border. The strikes represent a major turning point in the war against the Islamic State and opens up a risky new stage of the American military campaign.
It looks like the 3rd Iraqi war is going to be an open-ended conflict and obsequiousness will be Canberra’s response. So we have the Abbott government’s rapid escalation of our new involvement in Iraq going from a purely humanitarian mission to one where we appear to be joining the US in an open-ended civil war in the context of the West bearing significant responsibility for the catastrophic rise of ISIS from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
That history suggests that Western intervention will only make things worse rather than resolve the hideous aftermath of the last ones.
In this terror drama terrorist sympathisers in Australia were foiled plotting "an extravaganza of brutality" and this indicates the existential threat of “home-grown terrorism", the “enemies within”. Why, even Australia’s half a million Muslims are not “fitting in”, and their very presence is a threat to social cohesion. There is angst about Muslim incompatibility with “Western/Australian values”. Islamaphobia is being stirred by the shock jocks on talk back radio.
]]> The problem with this terror spectacle is that we don’t actually know the details of the evidence against those arrested. It is all wrapped in the shroud of counter-terrorism. No But the message is loud and clear--- Australia's national security is threatened big time.It's time for the Australian public to be alarmed and alert, for Australia to have a homeland security-type portfolio, and for all the anti-terrorism legislation to be passed asap. The terror theatrics justifies Australia's involvement in the 3rd Iraq War.
]]>Henry states that the core narrative that has been used to support economic policy reform efforts in Australia for the past 30 years goes like this: reforms that enhance productivity and cut costs, including labour costs, build international competitiveness; international competitiveness drives exports; exports drive growth; growth drives jobs; and jobs support living standards.
David RoweHe argues that recent reform proposals to deal with the economic consequences of the mining boom, and to contribute to international efforts to lower carbon emissions, have been presented tentatively, have been poorly understood, and have not proved resilient. He adds:
The fact that major policy initiatives in these areas have proven fragile has been cause for some questioning of our policy reform capacity. But really, given our national fixation with a simplistic reform narrative constructed on concepts of "international competitiveness", "exports", "growth", and "jobs", we should not have had high expectations of policy success in these areas.
According to the narrative, our prospects will be compromised by a set of Australian attributes developed over generations: excellence in governance; incorruptibility; safe working conditions; a concern with environmental sustainability and animal welfare; and institutions that support social harmony, economic and social opportunity, and tolerance.
All of these attributes support opportunity and freedom for this and future generations of Australians. They improve the well-being of the Australian people by enhancing their prospects of choosing a life of value. But a mercantilist might want to argue that all are costly; that Australia's international competitiveness could be improved by ditching any or all of them.
There’s no credible information that the Islamic State (IS) is planning an attack on Australia. Nor is there any indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters (Islamic State) operating in Australia. So there is no actual or imminent threat to the nation from the Islamic State.
Bruce PettyThat doesn't stop the war hawks from their fear mongering to scare a war weary population by implying that there are ISIS sleeper cells living in Australia and that they are a grave and unprecedented threat (far worse than al Qaeda!). The two people arrested in Queensland were not planning a domestic attack nor were they connected to the Islamic State.
]]> So Abbott has to “flex his muscles” and show “toughness” to justify his desire to assume the usual subservient Australian role in support of American wars. As Mark Latham in the Australian Financial Review observes:From presidents Johnson to Obama, tens of thousands of young lives have been sacrificed for purposes ill-conceived in their design and futile in their execution. And for every American misjudgement, Australia has been lock-step in agreement.With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s strong-arm government, the Coalition of the Willing lifted the lid on sectarian and tribal conflicts in Iraq. Islamic State militants are motivated by hatred of the West and a desire to restore Sunni dominance over the US-sponsored Shiite government in Baghdad.
The Abbott Government is obediently following the Obama administration's script of the need to destroy ISIS. That means the “limited” bombing of Syria and Iraq to attack ISIS will result in more justifications for military action in that region. If it turns out that airstrikes are insufficient to seriously degrade ISIS, and you really believe that ISIS is a serious threat to the “homeland” and national security interests, then how could you justify opposing anything needed to defeat them up to and including ground troops?
No doubt Australia’s participation in the last Iraq war will substantially increased the threat of homegrown terrorism to the country as well as encouraging, rather than discouraging, radicalized individuals to pour into Syria and Iraq to boost the IS numbers.
It is hard to look at U.S. actions in the Middle East and still accept that the goal of its military deployments is humanitarianism. The U.S. government does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East. To the contrary, recent history indicates that it is and long has been American policy to do everything possible to subjugate the populations of that region with brutal force. Humanitarianism is the cover for blowing things and people up with bombs.
]]>The next stage of Chinese development will likely see its citizens spending more on consumer goods, and this in turn means a reduced, demand for the raw minerals from Australia. What then of its medium and long term reforms as distinct from the short-sighted politics and protecting the interests of the miners and fossil fuel companies?
David RoweThe removal of the increase in compulsory superannuation from 9% to 12% indicates that it has none. Superannuation is one key way to further the "end of the age of entitlement" agenda as it shifts people from the old age pension to superannuation. It's self reliance par excellence. All it has done is to cut the rate of increase in the old age pension. This is hardly forward looking from a government anxious to tout its neo-liberal credentials.
]]> The Coalition's rhetoric is that the best way to eliminate the budget deficit is to slash spending, cut superannuation entitlements and ensure 80 per cent of the proceeds from Australia's diminishing resources flow offshore. Eliminate the budget deficit in this way----by promoting inequality and placing the greatest burden on those least able to bear it----will ensure national development and growing prosperity. The Coalition's rhetoric is premised on a morality tale:--a period of opulence must be atoned for by a period of austerity.The economic argument from economists with respect to 'budget repair' is that if a reduction in spending growth is not achieved over the medium term, an even greater share of the burden of fiscal consolidation would need to fall on the revenue side of the budget, meaning taxation increases. The Commonwealth budget doesn’t add up. Revenues don’t cover outgoings. The numbers won’t improve much with time. It’s very unlikely that driving economic growth will solve the budget’s problems, given that small countries like Australia are simply too dependent on what goes on abroad.
Yet the Coalition's new spending which is increasing the budget deficit, suggests that it will not prove capable of managing the twilight of the mining boom by investing to develop human capital by educating the Australian population. Their emphasis appears to to be the low road of a low wage economy.
]]>Mission creep that is a continuation of the war of terror. Last week Australia was dropping food and water to prevent a humanitarian crisis. This week Australia is dropping weapons in a region where the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), one of 19 organisations that Canberra lists globally as terrorists, is active. The SAS is also involved as they will provide protection to the crew when they land in coming days in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to deliver arms and munitions.
Martin RowsonSo Australia has intervened into a civil war by supporting one terrorist organization --the PKK-- against another --the Islamic State (IS) that is tacitly supported by Saudi Arabia, which Australia sees as one of the good guys who are part of the West. Australia is a gun runners for the Kurds at the behest of the United States. Australia also supported IS in its opposition to the Assad regime in Syria. Will Australia now support Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, as an ally in the fight against Islamic State (Isis) extremists? If the US does Australia will follow suit.
The rhetoric is being ramped up--the danger posed by Islamic State (IS) extremists is being presented as the biggest security threat of modern times, surpassing that of al-Qaida. No doubt the rhetoric will start to include the claim that the battle with Isis is about defending Australian or "western values". So it is a war against Islam, which represents non-western values. National security is threatened. It requires a whole new range of executive powers to deal with jihadis returning from Iraq that will endanger our liberties. Labor falls into line.
Humanitarian intervention does not mean embracing war through picking a side and helping it to win, or lose. We know that western bombs will not restore the fortunes of the Iraqi government or force Isis to admit defeat. Isis will simply hide in civilian cities. So what substantive or existential, threat to the west does IS pose? How is Isis a danger to Australia?
]]>But its killing the coal-fired power generation industry. So the Abbott Government comes to the defence of the fossil fuel industry. The abolition of the carbon pricing gave coal-fired power generators a windfall and the proposals to kneecapping the Renewable Energy Target will give them a second windfall.
David PopeThe Warburton RET Review argues there are cheaper ways to reduce greenhouse emissions than by changing the way we generate electricity – clearly implying no change in electricity generation is necessary. Hence the defence of the fossil fuel industry and the status quo. There is no need to change the dominance of electricity generation by the fossil fuel industry.
]]> The Warburton Review has called for the closure of Australia’s renewable energy target to new entrants as one of two options it is recommending to the government. It is also calling for the immediate closure, or rapid wind back, of the small-scale renewable energy scheme, which supports rooftop solar and solar hot water. Although any legislative changes will be resisted and probably stopped in the Senate, the uncertainty will be enough to kill investment in large scale renewables.With the mining boom over and mining investment in decline it is clear that 'the what next' is not going to include the development of the renewable energy industry. Nor is it going to come from the digital economy given the Coalition's dumping of fibre broadband to the premises and its replacement with a dogs breakfast of a model.
As Paul Buddle observes that you can still support fibre to the premises (FttP) and praise its virtues while at the same time develop a path towards that ultimate goal through Multi Technology Mix (MtM). However, with the Coalition:
there are no plans, no investment strategies and no vision on how to move Australia on from MtM to FttP; a development that is inevitable. Under the current plans Australia will be stuck in a half way house for quite some time.
An ageing population means the government needs to spend more (on pensions and health care) it will also receive lower income tax. If the government does nothing it will experience a rise in the structural budget deficit.
David PopeThe Coalition is more concerned with using the rhetoric of national security and terrorist threats in Australia to put in place the steps to establish authoritarian rule. One of these steps is the way the proposed national security legislation that ASIO is demanding that journalists could be jailed for revealing intelligence operations. Journalists could face penalties even if they did not explicitly know what they were reporting on was linked to a special intelligence operation.
]]> There are three tranches of counter terrorism legislation being proposed by the Coalition. The first allows ASIO to surveil more computers and whole networks, and cracks down on whistleblowing; the second tranche relates to the prosecution of foreign fighters returning from war zones; and the third concerns a mandatory data retention regime for consumer metadata.The money to fund counter terrorism will be easily found. The cancer of budget repair miraculously disappears when it comes to the spooks. This suggests that the budget is really a vehicle to start imposing a free market economic model on Australia.
An example of this top-down imposition is the deregulation of universities. In the market-based model a student-consumer can simply buy an education. If things go wrong or the student ends up lacking the promised knowledge and skills, it is the seller’s fault in that the product is deficient. And they will be since the higher education institutions are driven to maximise resources rather than ensure the integrity of the educational services they offer.
It was never foreshadowed prior to, or during, the election campaign. Both Abbott and Pyne ruled them out, as they promised a period of relative policy stability in which changes already made (eg., the move to demand-driven courses) can be digested and adjusted to. The Coalition is trying to bludgeon its neo-liberal reforms through the Senate.
It is supported by the Group of Eight as these neo-liberal reforms will strengthen the Group of Eight at the expense of Australia’s Higher Education sector as a whole. So for the Group of Eight it’s fewer students, more research and higher rankings in the prestigious international university rankings. Teaching students will be concentrated elsewhere, in the non Group of Eight universities, some of which over time will be pressured by competition in the deregulated market to become teaching only institutions.
A free market model for an ageing population is self-reliance. Older Australians are now working longer, possibly due to better health, but most likely because of a realisation that they simply need to keep earning to boost insufficient retirement savings. They realize that the Coalition will cut costs by by reducing the pension--that is what is meant by 'ending the age of entitlement.' However, increased work levels are still not producing a sufficient income for the majority of older Australians to lead comfortable lifestyles.
]]>It has dumped the budget crisis/ rhetoric and sovereign risk in favour of there is no need to worry as most of the appropriations bills have passed the Senate and that there is no problem if the Senate doesn't hurry up with the rest of the budget. The rest --Medicare co-payment, deregulation of universities, tough new arrangements for the unemployed etc--- amount to $25 billion.
The bullyboy tactics to impose austerity haven't worked. Australians haven't bought it, and they are skeptical of the government's selling of austerity and the need for a shift to a deregulated market. They see unfairness.
David RoweThere is a medium term (a decade) for a consolidation of the budget, given the end of the mining boom and and the ageing population. There is a need for debate over how that consolidation will happen given the lower income growth than in the past decade.
]]> Should the consolidation involve a shift towards small government, greater scope for the deregulated market and rolling back the welfare state? Or should it retain the targeted welfare state and end corporate welfare?The Coalition's proposed deregulated university reforms mean that universities no longer function to ameliorate social status and inequality, but are part of a renewed capitalism; the private benefits of higher education to its graduate beneficiaries are today used to justify the removal of public funding and the charging of exorbitant fees. Capitalism’s logic is to widen inequality and, with the re-establishment of inequalities in wealth alongside inequalities in income.
The neo-liberal mode of governance---neo-liberalism is a political project at least as much as it is an economic theory ---means the privatisation of public services. It is ideologically associated with a classically minimal liberal state, with the efficiency of ‘free markets’ as against the ponderous and wasteful outcome of state planned economies and nationalised industries that characterised Keynesian welfare states. In practice neo-liberalism is linked with increasingly authoritarian uses of state power and with re-regulation of the economy to protect financial and mining capital rather than the de-regulation championed by advocates of neo-liberalism.
Increasingly, education is perceived as an object of private capital investment, both through outsourcing of functions to for-profit companies and the direct entry of for-profit providers. Universities are now knowledge corporations, competing in a global market for higher education.
]]>The politician's banging the drums of war are saying its iconic of the horror of the home grown terrorist threat and are the reason for the new anti-terrorism laws and mass surveillance of the Australian citizens, both of which require a lessening of citizens civil liberties.
This brings the threat of the civil war in Syria and Iraq home: our children are threatened by barbaric people who train their children to be terrorists. But the LNP stands resolute and firm to defend Australia's national security against the barbarism and brutal violence of the jihad terrorists. The terrorist attack could be any day now. That's the conservative rhetoric of the picture.
]]> This is not to downplay ASIO's warnings about the domestic threat posed by Australians participating in sectarian conflicts overseas or the need to deal with any returning Australian jihadists on their return from the Middle East. It is to highlight the rhetoric of the severed head in conservative discourse's politics of fear.This discourse refuses to acknowledge that the US, UK Australia and others who invaded Iraq are responsible for the breakdown and disintegration of the Iraqi state, at least 300,000-500,000 deaths, 1-4 million refugees, mass torture, ethnic cleansing in Iraq over the past decade that then triggered the Sunni revolt and rise of the deeply anti-Shi’a Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq. Now the western powers are using humanitarian concerns--protection of the Yazidis or the Christians from the Islamic State --for another armed intervention, even though Australia's national interest does not require a major intervention in either Iraq or Syria. It's a regional conflict.
The conservative media and political drumbeat is growing louder to move from humanitarian aid drops and begin the military campaign to prevent ISIS from establishing a caliphate through Syria and Iraq. Won't that increase the risk of terror attacks at home?
Along with the external humanitarian airdrops to the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar, and a lifting of the siege, there have been US Navy air-strikes on IS artillery close to Irbil, the capital of the secure Kurdish region; special Forces operating in the Kurdish region, providing intelligence and aiding target acquisition; and a supply or arms going to the Kurds. How long before a US base is established?
It won't be long before the limits of air power is reached---air strikes on their own cannot do any more than momentarily disrupt the advance of IS fighters, and even then only where they are out in the open. As the IS fighters occupy towns, villages and cities, immersing themselves among the local populations, the advantages of air strikes – precision, reach, overwhelming force – almost disappear because of the risk of collateral damage to innocent civilians.
]]>The economy i is being managed for our benefit for the benefit of the big businesses that dominate it. Increasing inequality is the consequence, and people are acutely aware that the 2014 Hockey Budget is designed to increase this inequality. They are seen to be seeking to reduce income support provided to the lowest income earners in Australia.
David RoweAs the economy transitions away from its reliance on resources projects the Abbott Government is seen to have little interest in reduce inequality, as it moves to unwind both welfare provisions and the progressive nature of our tax system. Senior ministers imply that inequality (including gender inequality) is not just unavoidable, but also beneficial.
However, in the political short term, with the LNP both lacking the Senate majority it needs to pass the budget, and the skills for good negotiating, compromising, and dealing in order to get policy through, it is in Clive Palmer’s political interests for the 2014 budget deadlock to continue, and a sense of chaos to envelop the government.
]]>The Islamic State is in fact a state in a region where the European drawn boundaries, that used to mark out Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, are collapsing. The shape of this region is being redrawn by the Islamic State expanding its territory. The Sunni Muslims are using their army to establish their own systems of government in their own territory. Let them. Iraq can collapse.
David RoweDespite the sabre rattling by the Abbott Government Australia will not fight the advance of ISIS. For what national interest reason would it do so? They will just hang onto the coat tails of the US which has just re-engaged militarily with the conflict in the region with its modest airstrikes to protect the Kurdish region.
]]> I would doubt that the American public is keen on US military intervention in Syria or Iraq, even if GOP hawks call for immediate action to arm the rebels in Syria and to launch air strikes in Iraq. The US public is not likely to support another US war in the Middle East, even if the GOP resorts to the traditional Republican attack on Democrats: Obama is weak on national security. Despite the limits to US power the Republicans will exploit the problems overseas for maximum political gain at home.So will the Coalition. It's a diversionary tactic; one that is designed to encourage Australians to become even more paranoid and xenophobic than they have already been encouraged to become. The justification for this exploitation will be national security.
Sacrifices need to be made and liberty curtailed because of the real or imagined threats to an idealised Australian way of life aliens (jihadists) living in our suburbs.
]]>When we haven't consented to that, the surveillance becomes invasive. WikiLeaks, the phone-hacking scandal, the Snowden files indicate he extent to which our communications are being monitored by the e triumvirate of state, press and data-harvesting corporations.
David RoweThe menace is within say the spooks. An emergency is threatening. Mass surveillance is needed.
So how wide is the proposed surveillance. It's very unclear what stuff is going to be subject to surveillance. Behind the pantomime and confusing messages the emphasis on security does appear to sacrifice individual liberty through state intrusion into our phone calls, physical location, and our email and browsing history.
]]> The spooks message is that "If you have nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear." However, our rights about our private lives are being handed over so that our secrets are revealed through mining our virtual identities. Yet, we can count on, the two major political parties will stitch together a deal which will sideline all meaningful democratic deliberation. Parliament will be bounced.The spin will be that a statutory boost to the security services, enabling the trawl through records of private internet and mobile phone traffic, was a draconian anti-terror measure thrust upon the politicians by terrible circumstance. Labor has already decided to support the government position, claiming to be satisfied by the argument that urgent legislation is required and satisfied with the safeguards to protect civil liberties.
The use of the national security argument as an excuse for riding roughshod over fundamental freedoms enshrined in law underscores that the Australian political establishment, which voted for this law, has lost its moral compass.
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