Now more than 70 per cent of Australian households have air conditioning, so suddenly we need an electricity system that can cope when everyone turns on those air conditioners at once on a sweltering summer afternoon in the suburbs — without turning anything else off. It is called peak load. And it happens a handful of times each summer — sometimes for only 40 hours a year in all — mostly between the hours of about 2 and 8pm when Australians arrive home on one of those 35-plus-degrees days.

What is also pointed out is that big energy makes money out of consumers using more power: the retailers make money by selling more electricity, the generators make money by selling more power… and the electricity networks make money from every kilowatt hour that goes through their network.

The way to address this is increased energy efficiency in the premises and to allow premises--households, industries, rural communities, universities, hospitals, sporting arenas or convention centres to supply power to the national electricity grid from their renewable resources or tri-generation systems.

He lists problems with pro-cyclicality in financial markets as well as regulation, rising inequality across the world, the incentives to manipulate and loot under current corporate governance regimes, the need for taxation in order to redistribute, to invest, to employ and provide for (global) public goods. He also seeks to protect politics from being purchased by private interests by providing more direct public financing to political actors and parties.

The Great Transfomation refers to Karl Polanyi's book on rise of the market economy. Polanyi argued that the development of the modern state went hand in hand with the development of modern market economies and that these two changes were inexorably linked in history. His reasoning for this was that the powerful modern state was needed to push changes in social structure that allowed for a competitive capitalist economy, and that a capitalist economy required a strong state to mitigate its harsher effects.

A similar transformation today, given the urgency of the climate crisis, would be the shift to a low carbon economy in which there is a surge of economic growth through a transition to clean energy. This is a shift away from the western model of capitalism---neo-liberal capitalism that gives primacy to the market--- which assumes that nature is an infinite source of resources and an infinite sink for wastes, and that the whole economic growth machine would be powered by fossil fuels forever. It is a model that fosters the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses.

Standing in the way of this transformation are the fossil-fuel companies (the coal and oil industries) who defend their threatened interests with a campaign of heavily funded denialism, and record campaign contributions and their association with the libertarian think tanks in manufacturing doubt about science. In the US they have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in greenhouse carbon emissions.

Their disinformation campaign --climate change is natural not man made----has been very successful. The media accord the same weight to the "skeptics" (eg.,Christopher Monckton, Bob Carter) as it does to mainstream scientists. This is done in the name of journalistic balance---- different sides were given equal treatment---when the reality is that media cannot be bothered to inform themselves about the science through reviewing the literature. The media's construction of a raging scientific debate when there wasn't one indicates the negligence of the mainstream media. They were trading in illusions.

Under Labor's proposed scheme, singles with health insurance earning more than $80,000 and couples earning more than $160,000 would receive a rebate of 10% to 20%. Singles earning $124,000 and couples on $248,000 would no longer be eligible. The bill includes a penalty for higher income earners who don’t take out private health insurance – the Medicare levy surcharge.

However, these measure have been knocked back by the Senate, mainly because of the Liberal Party who just love a big welfare state in spite of the small government rhetoric.
They also love the idea means testing welfare payments (welfare should be a safety net) but are opposed to means testing the private health insurance rebate. Hence they support the big social democratic welfare state they say they are deeply opposed to.

The proposals have the benefit of removing a glaring inequity in our present arrangements, which direct subsidies disproportionately to the well-off and underpin a middle class entitlement culture. Class war say the Liberals, even though the money saved could, and should, be used to improve public health services.

The policy issue here is that if we accept that private hospitals serve an important function, then they should be funded by means other than through private Insurance. Public funds for private hospitals should be paid directly to them, rather than being churned through private insurance where around 15 percent of that money goes in administration and profits. That would also be fairer to those Australians who pay for private hospital care from their own pockets, without being dependent on insurance.

Secondly, private health insurance is an expensive and clumsy way to do what the tax system and Medicare do so much better — that is to distribute funds to those who need health care.

There used to be only three certainties in life: death, taxes and the irrelevance of South Australia. Now we have two more. The first is that the current initiative to recognise indigenous people in the Constitution is doomed to failure. The second is that the position can be retrieved, but only if we act quickly to produce a modest, precise proposal.

However, from another perspective, that of making a transformation in the way energy is produced SA does matter. It has a high profile in terms of clean tech--- especially wind. The amount of wind power that is fed into its electricity systems in South Australia is 22 per cent wind, one of the highest in the world. SA represents the future.

The age of cheap oil and cheap coal is over and economic growth that increases GDP at the expense of our natural capital, is now “uneconomic growth”. The Australian economy is about to go through one of the most dramatic transformations since the industrial revolution. This will be driven by the need to act on climate change, energy security and resource scarcity.

The argument is that Australia must substantially and relatively quickly change the nature of its electricity supply. It must shift to clean-technologies that generate electricity with near-zero emissions, given that the Commonwealth’s goal is to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 2000 levels by 2050. The study says that these new, low-emission technologies are wind, solar PV, geothermal, nuclear, concentrating solar power, carbon capture and storage and bio- energy.

Some then say that technology will save the day. By this they mean that technological innovation will always extend resources and reduce prices through efficiency gains and substitution. It's the mastery of nature argument.

The Grattan study states that it is widely accepted that the federal government's emissions trading scheme will change the behaviour of Australian businesses, especially those in the energy sector. For instance, in the short-term, the scheme will make gas prices competitive with coal, and investment will shift accordingly. So an energy transition is under way. But gas will not deliver the emission reductions required and is at best a bridging technology.

The report argues that any one of these technologies has the potential to be scaled up sufficiently to play a role in meeting Australia's energy needs. However, all face major obstacles to achieving their full potential, and none can deliver the bulk of Australia's needs alone. Despite current projections, it is possible that none of the technologies can produce power at a scale and at costs similar to today’s electricity.

In other words existing policies will not on their own produce the transformation in energy that we need.The carbon pricing scheme, while a good start, is not enough. So what is to be done? The report argues that:

Markets must be the primary mechanism by which Australia reduces its emissions.To ensure markets work properly, government must also remove barriers to deployment of several technologies, such as transmission connection hurdles and subsidies to incumbent technologies.

If that is not enough, the report makes another point:

Yet even then, it remains unlikely that enough funds will be invested in the short term to give any of the low-carbon technologies a chance to deliver ... Governments should therefore support research and development in areas of national interest, and demonstration and early-stage deployment of a suite of technology options.

The Grattan report says that says regulatory reform is essential if the national electricity grid is to integrate sources such as solar, wind and geothermal, and not merely serve to protect incumbent gas and coal generation. Right now, the grid is designed essentially to connect major coal basics to capital cities. It needs to evolve to include wind and solar and other sources, and it needs to get smarter--- ie., substantial new transmission capacity is necessary including greater interconnection capacity between state regions to cater for variability in wind and solar.

Australia has just taken a few hesitant steps down the path of energy transformation, and it's political institutions have been convulsed by the effort. Imagine the effect the necessary policy interventions beyond the emissions trading scheme is going to have on them. Imagine the resistance and opposition to further intervention to support renewable energy from the mining and coal interests and their allies. This energy transformation is going to be a long and bitter battle.

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 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.)

It's yet another indication how those who work in the media have very little critical awareness of the media as a player in political life. They cannot see beyond a Gina Rinehart buying into Fairfax to create a bigger platform for her political views.

The standard response to the criticism that the media consistently misrepresents and distorts political events is that this lazy journalism arises because of the less profitable (than 20 years ago) newspapers trying to make the transition to the digital world. This time and money pressure argument states that journalists don't have time to do their job properly. Not only has demand for content increased with the emergence of the internet, but the same digital technology has undermined the newspaper's ability to adequately fund the profession.

However, time and money pressure argument misses the main point of the criticism. The media are political players with their own agenda and they are spinning just like the politicians. They both spin together and the spin of both often reinforces each other--as exemplified by the recent tent-embassy protests in Canberra.

Let's face it, journalists are ideologues-- their job is to misrepresent and distort reality to further the political and economic interests of the media organization. If they don't they are out of a job.

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.

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.

Tiso says that this narrative pits:

the profligate south versus the hard-working, virtuous, nose-to-the-grindstone north...the brutal austerity measures enacted in Portugal, Greece and Ireland (and, to a lesser extent so far, Spain and Italy) are a fitting punishment. The sin of profligacy, of living beyond one’s means, needs to be castigated: .. if [Greece] were relieved painlessly of its debt, then other economies in similar strife would have no incentive to cut expenditure and improve their fiscal position.

The response to the crisis is that the core economies possessing the money for a bailout (ie. France and Germany) are free to dictate its conditions without being subject to a union-wide democratic process. The real enforcers of the draconian measures that policy-makers advocate are the financial markets.

For Italy or Greece to service their large debt requires a sufficient pool of creditors who trust in your capacity to keep up with the repayments. If the pool shrinks, the interest rates go up and lo!, suddenly you find that you really can’t pay back the money. Loss of confidence. Another round of austerity measures is required. More sacrifice to prevent the interest rates from climbing to 7% levels on its bonds, which would put Italy and Greece on the brink of bankruptcy.

More sacrifice is required for those on mid to low incomes: doing without modern hospitals, having to work longer, abolishing the indexation of pensions; less protection from arbitrary dismissal; tax on home ownership; increase in value-added tax. If interest rates on the bonds climb, then that means the financial markets have judged the austerity measures are not harsh enough.

The problem with the austerity measures is that it leads in the short and medium terms to shrinking output, less government revenue and therefore debt burdens that become unsustainable. That increases the probability of governments defaulting, thus threatening the solvency of banks across Europe.

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.

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.

Is this nationalism----a love of country--- a counter to the triumph of global markets: a way of adapting to, and living with global capitalism? A re-assertion of the nation-state? A pride in being Australian? It's a puzzle since the Australian flag has a Union Jack in the top left corner. That signifies the country’s colonial status.

It's also a puzzle because January 26 is an odd day to celebrate a National Day--belonging to the nation with which we identify--- since it is the day of the arrival of the first fleet and therefore the establishment of the colony of NSW—what meaning does that have for Victorians or South Australians? Or West Australians? Or Tasmanians? How do they respond to 'love it or leave it'.

Often this understanding of love for country is coupled with the assertion that there are “real Australians,” as opposed to others who are held to be driving the country into a ditch. We could call this a Tea Party nationalism, as it is an ethnic based nationalism that excludes those deemed not to be ‘real Australians’.

Groups tend to define themselves not by reference to their own characteristics but by exclusion, that is, by comparison to “strangers.” The exclusion of the other in Australia has historically fractured along racist lines. This maybe a minority view, but its there, and it constantly surfaces around Aboriginal-Australians, Muslim-Australians and asylum seekers.

In 2010 it was reported that the Latrobe Valley generators had a combined $9 billion in debt to be rolled over by 2015. Some power companies may already be close to insolvency, facing massive asset write downs on their power stations – in particular, Morwell, Hazelwood, Yallourn W and even Loy Yang A and B. The stark reality of the new carbon pricing regime is that, despite free credits being available in the early years, the viability of long-term operations will be closely scrutinised in 2012 as companies struggle with massive refinancing costs.

This context highlights the struggle for control over this basic form of energy, which many have traditionally seen as an essential public service.

The reason Australia has such a piecemeal and ineffective set of solar policies is the immense political power of Australia’s big greenhouse polluters--- the coal industry. This is an industry that receives huge continuing subsidies to the production and use of fossil fuels yet opposes subsidies to renewable sources of energy associated with the federal Renewable Energy Target and the remaining state-based feed-in tariffs.

Jacob Applebaum - leading computer security researcher and hacker
Bernard Keane - 'Crikey' journalist and author
Scott Ludlam - Senator for Western Australia and Greens spokesperson for Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy
Suelette Dreyfus - author and researcher on whistleblowing

This is a video of the talk by Bernard Keane:

War on the Internet event #1 - Bernard Keane from Electronic Frontiers Australia on Vimeo.

Keane's argument is about the conflict between the internet's interconnectedness and community and the hierarchy of corporations and governments. The latter respond to the challenges thrown up by the former with greater surveillance of internet communities and attacks on the flow of information. In the Australian context we have seen extra powers being given to ASIO in the Cyber Crime bill.

It chronicles the wave of attacks being launched by governments the world over on both the internet and its users. His taxonomy is: those by illegitimate regimes trying to protect themselves, those mounted in the name of national security, those mounted by or at the behest of powerful gatekeepers to protect old business models, and those aimed at cultural engineering.

The talk by Suelette Dreyfus about the surveillance society is here.

What we have is a delayed introduction to mandatory pre-commitment, slipping out to 2016, and only after a "full trial" of the measures in Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory from February 2013.

Mandatory pre-commitment has already been trialled in South Australia, in Queensland and in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia (see the Productivity Commission). These showed a significant number of gamers used the pre-commitment schemes to monitor and limit their daily expenditure. That means reduced income for the clubs.

the Government is utterly disingenuous about what's really going on.Clubs Australia has got its way again. Gillard has caved into its pressure just as surely as she rolled over for the mining industry when she watered down the mining tax.She has also caved into pressure from nervous members of the ALP caucus. As in so many other areas, the Government is incapable of fighting back in support of its policy positions. They prefer appeasement.

I appreciate that the Gillard Govt is currently blamed for everything that happens or doesn't happen, but the ALP right wing power brokers, by cutting Wilkie loose in this way, will reinforce the negative perception fostered by the Coalition that this represents another broken promise. They opposition have a track record of successfully mining the vein of trust and conviction and the ALP continues to feed them.

Although Romney has a double-digit poll lead in Florida, it may turn out that the selection process shapes up as a Romney-Gingrich battle set to be fought state by state, month by month. That would be media heaven.

We can wave Rick Santorum goodbye in the near future. He is almost broke so cannot fund an expensive ad campaign in Florida, and there is less support in the state for his brand of social conservatism popular with Christian evangelicals. Romney now faces a troubling reality: He’s lost two of the first three contests, with his only victory coming in what is essentially his home state.