Category Archives: Politics & Government

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society, Sundries

Trading away our rights and freedoms

April 17, 2015 Brian 9 Comments

John Quiggin has written about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks (article here, plus commentary at his blog).

This is meant to be a link post, but knowing how lazy people are with links I’ll highlight a few points here with a few comments of my own.

So far the negotiations involve twelve countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. Potential members include India and Indonesia. China, not so far but perhaps eventually.

Quiggin says that apart from agricultural products tariffs, quotas and other restrictions on trade have largely disappeared in our region. The TPP represents the emergence of “new generation” agreements. At the core of these agreements lie investor-state relations where a transnational corporation can sue a government for damaging its commercial interests by passing laws the detract from the corporations profits. Investor-state disputes are settled by a trade panel, usually three lawyers. Their rulings stand and are not appeallable in any court of law. Concerns include the environment, human rights protection, public welfare regulation, and health effects. Any law found u in the dispute ruling to inhibit a corporation’s profits is simply set aside.

For an overview, see AFTINET’s pamphlet and links at the end. For example, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA):

Currently, the US Lone Pine energy company is using ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] provisions in NAFTA to sue the provincial government of Quebec for $250 million because it suspended shale gas mining pending an environmental study in response to community concerns.

Quiggin didn’t mention this, but the precautionary principle doesn’t apply. Under NAFTA a product must be proven to cause harm before it can be restricted. Any law based on the precautionary principle could be set aside in a dispute.

It’s beyond the imagination to think that the Americans would agree to labelling GM foods in the TPP.

The new generation agreements also have intellectual property components, which enhance the rights of corporations beyond what would be commonly thought reasonable.

Investor-state relations and intellectual property are being used already by Philip Morris and Big Tobacco in an attempt set aside Australian tobacco labelling laws. Philip Morris, for example, has incorporated in Hong Kong to bring a case under investor-state provisions we signed up to way back in 1993. If successful under trade dispute provisions a 6-1 High Court decision supporting the labelling regulations would be set aside.

Politically there has been strong bi-partisanship in Australia under the banner “free trade is good” since Latham and Conroy went to water over the US Free Trade Agreement in 2004. Hence recent agreements have been seen an an unmitigated good. Quiggin points out that one way of concluding agreements quickly, as Robb has done, is to concede the other party’s demands.

In the case of the agreement with Japan, for example, Australia secured some modest concessions regarding tariffs on beef, which will be reduced from 38.5 per cent to 19 per cent over a period of fifteen years. In return, our government accepted the total exclusion of rice from the deal, and the maintenance of most restrictions on dairy products.

The Korean agreement, KAFTA, was arguably even worse. Reversing our previous position, the government agreed to the inclusion of investor–state dispute provisions. This was apparently done not in response to Korean demands but because US negotiators were pushing the provision in the parallel negotiations for the TPP.

Negotiations are going on in secret, but sections revealed through Wikileaks give cause for alarm. In the end:

It seems certain that the final agreement will involve a substantial loss of Australian sovereignty and an acceptance of economically damaging intellectual property rules. In return, Australia will receive marginal and long-drawn-out improvements in market access for agricultural commodities. While a Labor government might perhaps have held out for a better deal, it seems unlikely that the opposition will reject legislation implementing the agreement.

Quiggin is right, I think, when he says:

The new generation agreements are primarily about imposing a particular model of global capitalism, with the United States as the model and multinational corporations as the main engines of economic activity.

Back in 1999 massive protests disrupted the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in the ‘Battle in Seattle’. The WTO countered by holding the next meeting in Doha in 2001, where protester access was impossible, and promoting it as the “development round” ostensibly to meet developing country concerns. Against developing country resistance “New Issues” including investor-state relations, were forced onto the agenda. See the Road to Cancun section of my Webdiary piece Reaching for the Moon: how the poor lost and won at Cancun.

The so-called “New Issues” stemmed from a special WTO meeting in Singapore back in 1996 and included investor-state relations, which were pursued under the infamous and controversial MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) under the aegis of the OECD until they were defeated in 1998.

At Cancun although investment was taken off the table during the meeting, some of the New Issues remained. However, through Japanese and Korean stubbornness and developing country resistance the talks collapsed. Attempts were made to revive the Doha round, but Quiggin says here that it finally broke down in 2008. Since then the US and other free trade advocates have been pursuing their ends through bilateral and regional agreements.

There were protests at Cancun, although the site was a peninsula which was blocked off. A South Korean farmer, Lee Kyung-Hai, famously committed suicide, apparently unable to compete with cheap Australian beef.

Since then there has been little protest and little public discussion in spite of the efforts of AFTINET, Getup and Choice.

Behind closed doors trade negotiators are determining the kind of society in which we will live, and we are letting them do it.

Ironically our best chance is a US Congress stalemate. Not good enough.

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Where to with tax?

April 9, 2015 Brian 11 Comments

Since John Davidson posted the Greens’ ideas on tax there has been a lively debate. Here I give some links to views I have found interesting.

John Quiggin has started his own tax policy review Rethinking tax policy for Australia, a work in progress with a proposal so far to tax the “immensely profitable” banks to the tune of $5 to 10 billion.

Quiggin’s Guardian article is essential reading. Amongst the points he makes:

The review itself is poor quality, adding little to the thinking of the Asprey Review of 1975. There are major omissions.

The government is hoping for an increase in the GST, achieved through some combination of higher rates and the elimination of exemptions. This isn’t going to happen.

“The fallback position, on which bipartisan agreement looks feasible, is a scaling back of the massive tax expenditures on superannuation. If that is the only outcome of Re:think, the exercise will have been a worthwhile one.”

Ben Eltham at New Matilda points out “reform” has become a dirty word. With this government it has come to mean mostly policies that are deeply regressive and unpopular. The government discussion paper on tax:

is the latest front in the Coalition’s neoliberal war on working Australians. It will fail for the same reasons the “reforms” to health and education failed: voters don’t want reform. They want high-quality public services, affordable housing, and a good job. They know companies aren’t paying their fair share, and they want them to pay more.

When will the government and business spinmeisters learn that “reform” is a massive turnoff for voters?

Clearly we need to pay more tax. The government’s way around this problem is to increase the GST. Peter Martin says that we should concentrate on captive sources of revenue:

The trick is to grab more of the money that’s bolted down and unable to leave the country, and less of the money that’s footloose. It’s anything but fair, but tax is about raising revenue more than it is about fairness, and we can’t raise revenue we frighten away.

So that means eliminating dividend imputation for shareholders, taxing superannuation and taxing people for owning property rather than buying it.

Don’t worry about the Googles, Microsofts and Apples. They’ll gravitate to the cheapest tax haven they can find.

Martin reckons that is we knock off dividend imputation the company tax could be reduced to 19 or even 15%. In any case it’s trending to zero.

Ian McAuley at New Matilda has a perceptive piece. He says:

Australia does need tax reform. There is even a case for increasing the rate and extent of the GST, but only if it is part of a comprehensive package aimed at collecting more revenue and making the whole system fairer.

But when tax reform is in the context of revenue neutrality, or even a reduction in overall taxes, and the message is that corporations should pay less tax while consumers pay more, the proposals are politically dead in the water.

McAuley is also not impressed with the notion that companies should pay less.

The regular World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Reports tend to show that business tax concessions are the inducement of last resort, offered by countries with low education standards, poor infrastructure and unstable government.

Perhaps Hockey’s push for lower corporate taxes is in realisation that Australia is becoming that type of economy.

So to sum up, the Government’s main strategy seems to be to hold Commonwealth taxes to current levels, or less, but to shove off responsibility to the states for hospitals and schools necessitating an increase in the GST

However, they say that a change to the GST needs to be bipartisan. Labor sees it as highly regressive and won’t have a bar of it. Similarly the LNP won’t go near a price on carbon or a mining tax. There does seem to be some consensus now that super has to be part of the equation. In itself it’s unlikely to be sufficient.

What the exercise does do is to put the wood on both major parties to come up with proposals to take to the next election that are coherent, understandable and make a difference.

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 4/4

April 4, 2015 Brian 9 Comments

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Birthdays!

Three birthdays to mention.

Larvatus Prodeo was born at Easter 2005, so would be 10 years old if still alive. I started blogging there about three months later.

Secondly, I turned 75 just over a week ago.

I usually don’t make a fuss over birthdays, reasoning that I’m just one day older than the day before. So every day is new. My cardiologist is very happy with me, and I can tell you that since my triple bypass in 2000 he’s the main man!

Third, Climate Plus was born a year ago tomorrow. Some 318 posts later we are still here. It has been an experience – some surprises, some disappointments.

For the foreseeable future I plan to carry on. Political posts are more than twice as popular as climate posts, but our main reason for being here is climate. My aim is to keep the lay reader abreast of important developments in a brief and digestible form.

Feedback is more than welcome.

2. Vale Betty Churcher (1931-2015)

Betty Churcher died during the week, aged 1984. As an artist, as a teacher, as an arts administrator, and as a human being she excelled and attracted nothing but praise.

As a woman she had several firsts, most notably in 1990 she became the first woman at the helm of the National Gallery of Australia, where she was director for 7 years.

While there she earned the nickname “Betty Blockbuster” for presiding over 12 international blockbuster exhibitions, which in turn led to a corresponding growth in the gallery’s attendance numbers and revenue. She also initiated the construction of new galleries for large-scale temporary exhibitions, gave the gallery its current name after dropping “Australian National Gallery” and acquired Arthur Streeton’s Golden Summer, Eaglemont, 1889, for $3.5 million.

Image courtesy of the ABC.

3. Selling ugly produce at low prices

Every year Canadians waste some 40% of their food. A large part of the problem is that “ugly” food, misshapen or marked, is thrown out. Now one large retailer is selling this food at a discount in Ontario and Quebec.

Should happen here.

4. UK elections

The UK election campaign started in earnest. Here’s a prediction of the outcome.

According to that it could be a coalition of Labour, the Scottish National Party and what’s left of the Liberal Democrats.

Ed Miliband seems to have come through the leaders debate OK.

5. Jacqui Lambie starts her own party

Jacqui Lambie has applied to register The Jacqui Lambie Network as a political party.

She’s also got something else to think about.

A PUP statement released on Wednesday threatened to spend up to $3 million on legal fees in a bid to recover $2 million and $7 million from Senator Lambie and Senator Lazarus respectively.

Senator Glenn Lazarus quit the Palmer United Party earlier this year.

Senator Glenn Lazarus quit the Palmer United Party earlier this year.

PUP claims those are the amounts spent helping Senator Lazarus and Lambie get elected under the party’s banner at the 2013 election.
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Both senators have since abandoned PUP and are now sitting as independents.

Lambie says he promised not to sue.

6. Goodnight Goodluck Jonathon

President-elect of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he plans to aggressively fight corruption that has long plagued Nigeria and go after the root of the nation’s unrest.

For the first time in Nigeria’s history, the opposition defeated the ruling party in democratic elections.

Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by about 2 million votes, according to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission.

The win comes after a long history of military rule, coups and botched attempts at democracy in Africa’s most populous nation.

Jonathon’s main contribution seemed to be making many billions of oil revenue due to the state magically disappear.

Politics & Government

Palaszczuk puts premiership on the line

March 30, 2015 Brian 11 Comments

Annastacia Palaszczuk has put her premiership on the line by sacking Billy Gordon, the Member for Cook, from the ALP and asking him to resign his seat.

The state of the parties now is that the LNP has 42, the ALP 43, the Katter Party has two and there are two independents, Peter Wellington and Billy Gordon. To govern a party needs 45 votes, including the casting vote of the speaker, currently Peter Wellington.

To cut to the chase, Gordon is not legally obliged to resign, and I suspect he won’t. The Katter Party are in talks with Labor, as they “don’t want to be in the business of tearing down governments every six months or every year.”

The Katter Party:

wants Labor’s commitment on improving regional roads, water development, mandating ethanol in fuel and setting up a rural development bank.

This whole matter was raised by Geoff Henderson on the NSW election thread. For posterity I’ll attempt to outline the relevant information here.

The Brisbane Times link contains the full text of Gordon’s statement about his past. His record with the law is summarised at the ABC:

Breaking and entering and stealing in 1987 in Innisfail

Breaking and entering with intent, attempted breaking and entering and stealing in 1990 in Atherton

Breach of probation in 1992 in Atherton

Public nuisance in 1996 in Normanton and breach of bail conditions in 1999

Driver licence suspended for unlicensed driving in 2004 and 2008

Served with an Apprehended Violence Order in 2008 after a complaint by his mother.

I understand he also falsified tax returns to avoid paying child support. Furthermore on Friday Palaszczuk referred Gordon to police amid allegations he abused a former partner a decade ago.

Gordon has deceived the public, the ALP in pre-selection and Palaszczuk said he looked her in the eye and lied to her. He should resign from parliament.

However, his statement published in the Brisbane Times makes much of his underprivileged upbringing and his yearning for a “perfect father figure” when he got into trouble with the law as a teenager. I get the impression that he has forgiven himself much, and will do so again. His latest statement:

Mr Gordon, the member for Cook, said in a statement he was weighing up his options and needed time to seek further legal advice and discuss the matter with his family and supporters.

“I am very concerned that I should be afforded natural justice in any determination that my tenure as the Member for Cook should be terminated because of [the Premier’s] move to see me expelled from the Labor Party and her wish for me to resign as a Member of Parliament,” the statement said.

“The Premier has previously requested that the Police Commissioner investigate whether I have transgressed any law and that process should be allowed to continue its natural course.

“Any other attempt to remove me from the Parliament and force me to resign is a denial of natural justice.”

He said in the statement he had a “serious eye operation” on Monday.

Legally Professor Graeme Orr of Queensland University said Mr Gordon could only be forced to resign from Parliament if he served more than a year in jail.

A question has been raised as to whether Labor should accept Gordon’s vote. Personally I think this would only further disenfranchise the citizens of Cook.

Meanwhile the Katter Party are asking quite a lot of a cash-strapped government. The alternatives then are trying to govern as a minority government, or going to the people. Katter plus LNP does not add up without Wellington, and it is doubtful that he would give the LNP a go.

I understand that the LNP in post-polling analysis believe that dislike of Campbell Newman was worth about 7% to Labor. On that basis they would expect to win in a canter. Graham Young who has also done some polling believes that there was a significant “protest vote element” of people wanting to send the Newman government a message, but not wanting to elect Labor.

Update: Gordon holds Cook on a margin of more that 6%.

Politics & Government

New South Wales election

March 28, 2015 Brian 17 Comments

The Morgan Poll has Mike Baird’s LNP a clear leader at 57.5-42.5 over the ALP, so an even race would be unexpected. If the win turns out to be 51-49 or even 52-48 questions will be asked about the influence of Abbott’s leadership travails, but that looks extremely unlikely.

Of interest will be whether the Greens can get themselves into second place in one or two of the northern seats and win on preferences.

Antony Green points out that there is a second election taking place, one that is crucial if the LNP is to proceed with it plan to privatise half the electricity distribution system. NSW of course has an upper house, the Legislative Council, where the LNP has only 19 of the 42 members. The ALP has 14 and the Greens 5, leaving the balance of power with the Christian Democrats (2) and the Shooters and Fishers(2).

After the LNP elects one member as president it has only 18 votes, hence has needed both minor parties to get the required 21 votes to pass legislation. An important sticking point is that Shooters and Fishers Party opposes the privatisation of electricity.

A term in the Legislative Council is eight years, so half the members face election each time. This time the LNP has 11 continuing members and 8 facing election. It needs to elect 9 to have the numbers to pass its privatisation legislation with the help of the Christian Democrats. Green reckons the LNP needs about 39% of the first preference vote to get 9 members elected. Morgan has them on 49% of the primary vote, so with the quota 4.55% it should be a cake walk. On that basis they could get 11, as they did last time. If so they’ll be home free without needing anyone else’s vote.

With 9 members elected the LNP would be in a situation where it could pass any legislation with the assistance of just one of the minor parties, assuming that both the Christian Democrats and the Shooters and Fishers elect one member each to add to their continuing single members. These minor parties typically need just 2 to 2.5% of first preference votes to achieve a quota of 4.55%. In 2011 Pauline Hanson failed on 2.5% because she attracted very few preferences.

Oddly other polls seem to favour the ALP less than Morgan. Essential has the LNP ahead only 53-47. Newspoll is on 55-45.

Altogether, though, it looks like a good news day for the LNP.

Elsewhere, Peter John Chen has a more comprehensive review of the election and the issues involved.

Politics & Government

Abbott explodes his economic credibility

March 24, 2015 Brian 15 Comments

Barrie Cassidy has called it a breathtaking shift in economic management.

Laura Tingle took the gloves off in an article Being governed by fools is not funny:

A bit like the old story of the frog that gets boiled alive because the temperature of the water in which it sits rises only gradually, we don’t seem to quite be able to take in the growing realisation that we actually are being governed by idiots and fools, or that this actually has real-world consequences.

We finish the week with a Prime Minister who has lost his bundle and is making policy and political calls that go beyond reckless in an increasingly panicked and desperate attempt to save himself; a government that has not just utterly lost its way but its authority; and important policy debates left either as smouldering wrecks or unprosecuted.

When debt under Labor reached 13% of GDP Abbott characterised it as a “disaster”, likely to send the economy down the Greek path. Suddenly, with 20% of his 2014 budget savings stalled in the senate, we have “done the heavy lifting” and the prospect of debt 50 to 60 per cent of GDP “is a pretty good result looking around the world”.

Here’s the graph of the forecast underlying budget cash balance from the Intergenerational Report:

It shows the “currently legislated” path reaching a deficit of 6% of GDP in 40 in years.

Here’s Abbott, pointing to the wrong line, showing us that we’ve done the heavy lifting:

Standard and Poor have warned that if debt, federal and state, goes beyond $30 billion we can expect to lose our prized AAA credit rating.

Laura Tingle and Phillip Coorey say that the federal budget’s forecast bottom line has gone backwards by at least $80 billion since the Coalition came to office.

Abbott and Hockey would have us believe that the bottom line on that graph represents the legacy from Labor. In fact the following set of graphs from Tingle’s article shows the deterioration in the hands of Abbott and Hockey. The first set on the left represent Labor’s legacy:

To emphasise the point about Labor’s legacy, this is the 10-year projection from the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) prepared independently by Treasury and Finance and published under the charter of budget honesty in August 2013 before the last election is shown:

That’s from this post.

Laura Tingle says that Labor’s focus groups keep throwing up the word “idiot” in relation to Tony Abbott. Swinging voters in Western Sydney in polling commissioned by Fairfax described the Prime Minister as “incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool”. She thinks that there are “signs that our political system really is in deep trouble – not as a polemic point, but in a very real sense.”

Peter Martin tells us that:

In Labor’s last financial year in office, spending exceeded revenue by 5.4 per cent. This year it will exceed it by 13 per cent.

The budget does have to be fixed. The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, recently warned that in a recession a deficit of 3% of GDP will quickly balloon out to 6 to 7%. That allows no space for government stimulus of the economy.

Apparently Hockey has been sitting on a tax white paper for several months which is to be released next Monday, after the NSW election. Peter Martin looks to the savings available from super:

Treasury’s most conservative estimate has the concession for contributions to super funds costing $15.5 billion this financial year, climbing to $18 billion over three years. The tax concession for the earnings of funds costs $12 billion and is set to almost double to $22 billion. By way of comparison, Medicare costs $20 billion.

Peter Lloyd, Professor of Economics at University of Melbourne, puts forward some ideas, including:

Eliminating negative gearing for housing investments

Restricting the allowable deductions for depreciation and other business expenses

Revising rules relating to income from trusts

Tightening the rules for fringe benefit taxation

Reforming the taxation of super contributions and income

Reducing tax concessions for not-for-profit organisations

As he says, each one of these will meet objections from tax payers. But then the art of taxation was always plucking the goose without too much squawking.

A prime minister fighting for political survival appears to have thrown in the towel.

Update: I meant to mention that Labor had the budget remaining in surplus over the remaining part of a 10-year projection in order to show how Gonski and NDIS would be paid for, whereas Abbott/Hockey planned to slash schools and Hospital funding by $80 billion dollars.

Abbott is now saying that a surplus will be achieved within 5 years, whereas Mathias Cormann is saying “as soon as possible”.

Life, Politics & Government

Malcolm Fraser bows out

March 21, 2015 Brian 5 Comments

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has died aged 84. Here he is in his prime:

Former PMs have had nice things to say. Here’s Paul Keating:

“I always thought Malcolm would be around a lot longer. I must say, I wished he had been.

“Notwithstanding a controversial prime ministership, in later years he harboured one abiding and important idea about Australia – its need and its right to be a strategically independent country.

“His public life also enshrined other important principles: no truck with race or colour and no tolerance for whispered notions of exclusivity tinged by race. These principles applied throughout his political life.”

The same article summed his contribution as follows:

In office, Fraser was a staunch conservative on economic policies, an opponent of deregulation – and he was was criticised by his colleagues for lacking reform zeal. But he continued many of Labor’s progressive reforms.

In 1976 he established the family court of Australia and federal court of Australia; granted the Northern Territory self-government; passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act; created the position of federal ombudsman and established the ABC’s FM radio service. The next year, he established the National Aboriginal Conference and SBS.

In 1979 the Fraser government established the Australian Refugee Advisory Council to advise it on the settlement of refugees – many of whom had been arriving as “boat people” from Vietnam since 1978.

After criticising the Liberal party’s direction during the years of the Howard government, Fraser finally quit the party when Tony Abbott came to the opposition leadership, unhappy with Abbott’s rejection of emissions trading. He said the Liberal party was no longer a liberal party but instead a conservative party.

Fraser campaigned assiduously for human rights and attacked the party’s stance on immigration and refugees.

Economics was perhaps his weak spot. Richard Holden summarises:

Australia can be justifiably proud of an approach to economics that is squarely between Europe and the United States. The US, on the whole, champions free enterprise despite the social costs; Europe sees a much larger role for the state, even if that inhibits free enterprise. The Australia in which we live today is somewhere in between.

When Malcolm Fraser became prime minister that was all up for grabs. We could have become “old Euope” or veered onto a radically individualist path in response to the debacle that came before. Fraser helped us chart a middle course, and we should be very grateful for that.

Perhaps he wasn’t quite up to the challenge, but he had a steady hand and did no great harm. The Guardian has a suite of articles, the titles of which tell a story:

Malcolm Fraser’s steady hand is in stark contrast to Tony Abbott’s chaotic manoeuvres Lenore Taylor

Malcolm Fraser had no Damascene conversion – he always championed human rights Katherine Murphy

Malcolm Fraser, a leader who believed there is a moral compass in our nation’s life Fred Chaney

Malcolm Fraser dared to dream of a truly original Australian foreign policy Margaret Simons

Fraser’s great conservative achievement: cementing Whitlam’s progress on race Robert Manne

Fraser’s politics didn’t shift much after 1975, but the rest of Australia’s did Julian Burnside

Tributes roll in – a prime minister who won three elections remembered

Malcolm Fraser: Australia’s former prime minister – in pictures

Fraser was ruthless in gaining power, first in the coup that unseated Gorton as PM, then doing over Billy Sneddon for the Liberal leadership and later in the famous dismissal of the Whitlam government. I hated him tribally for that, and disliked him for his apparent aloofness and arrogance, but later came to see him as a man of principle and values.

There’s more on his legacy at the ABC and heaps of articles just about wherever you look!

Probably the best article that takes you to the complexity of the personality and his politics is Guy Rundle at Crikey, unfortunately paywalled.

A remaining mystery is what really happened that night in Memphis, when Fraser turned up in the foyer of a seedy hotel without his trousers.

Update: Must read on Fraser at The Piping Shrike.

Politics & Government

The right to vote in the land of the free

March 17, 2015 Brian 1 Comment

Several remarkable things happened during the 50-year anniversary celebrations of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama. On that day in 1965 there was a violent confrontation between police and protesters during a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That march is now considered a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement as it led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The first remarkable thing was that President Barack Obama crossed the bridge holding the hand of Congressman John Lewis. As Patty Culhane of Aljazeera said:

It is remarkable symbolism. The first African American President walked the span alongside the man who led the march in 1965.

Himself now a Congressman. Progress has definitely been made.

In 2013, however, the Supreme Court weakened, some say gutted, the Voting Rights Act.

The second remarkable thing was that President Obama felt he had to make a call on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act and to call to account the petty-minded partisans in state governments who see it as their civic duty to pass laws limiting the right to vote. Here is the relevant transcript of Obama’s speech, said to be one of his finest:

With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anyone, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity, and if we really mean it, if we’re willing to sacrifice for it, then we can make sure every child gets an education suitable to this new century, one that expands imaginations and lifts their sights and gives them skills. We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class.

And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right to vote. Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor.

How can that be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.

But then he also felt it necessary to call out the voters themselves, who, without discouragement from state laws, do not exercise their vote as much a people in other countries.

Of course, our democracy is not the task of Congress alone, or the courts alone, or the President alone. If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples. Fifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap. It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes, your life. What is our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future?

Fellow marchers, so much has changed in fifty years. We’ve endured war, and fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives, and take for granted convenience our parents might scarcely imagine. But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship, that willingness of a 26 year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five, to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.

That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.

The reference to American exceptionalism is rather ironic (but see below). It is exceptionally dopey to leave voting in the hands of state administrations and not set up a statutory organisation like the Australian Electoral Commission. It is exceptionally dopey too to have the vote on a Tuesday, a working day.

The means states use to discourage minority voting are worth another post, but include ID requirements, challenges to voter registration and the uneven distribution of voting machines, leading to long queues in minority areas. There were even reports of partisans causing traffic jams in areas where minority voters predominate. The difference between black and white levels of voter registration improved after 1965, but are still quite stark.

Voluntary voting requires partisan effort to get out the vote. America is exceptional in that so much partisan effort is also put into preventing people from voting.

The Democracy Now report on the event takes a different perspective. The Selma march was organised because of a police killing of a young black male.

African Americans and their allies attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, demanding the right to vote. As soon as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they were violently attacked by the Alabama State Police, beaten with nightsticks and electric cattle prods, set upon by police dogs and tear-gassed. They were chased off the bridge, all the way back to Selma’s Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where the march began. News and images of the extreme and unprovoked police violence, in contrast to the conduct of the 600 marchers, who practiced disciplined nonviolence, spread across the globe. Within months, President Lyndon Johnson would sign the 1965 Voting Rights Act, responding to the public outrage and to the pressure applied by a skillfully organized mass movement.

Edmund Pettus was a former Alabama senator, Confederate general and grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.

Three white people “were killed in or near Selma, along with many others, for supporting the struggle for voting rights.” President Obama was referring to them in the second last paragraph of the speech excerpt.

That is special, and once again, the issue of police violence, especially towards racial minorities, is absolutely current.

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 14/3

March 14, 2015 Brian 23 Comments

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Away next week

This week the Simpson Desert crossing fellowship is meeting for a reunion at Glen Alpin near Stanthorpe, where two of the couples live, I gather in idyllic circumstances.

A splendid time is assured, but it will take three days out of my blogging life. I promise I’ll think of you all!

2. Queensland Alzheimer’s breakthrough

Queensland scientists have discovered a new treatment that could help restore the memory of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

The process uses ultrasound technology to help clear a plaque that builds up in the brain of Alzheimer’s sufferers.

They’ve successfully trialled the plaque-removal technology on mice. Human trials are about two years away.

About 250,000 Australians suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

3. Gender pay gap hits a two-decade high

The gender pay-gap is getting worse, not better, with new figures out yesterday showing the wage disparity between men and women has blown out to a two-decade high of 18.8 per cent.

The figures show that full time workers, when averaged across all industries, will earn $298 less per week if they happen to be a woman.

At the same time that lovely man, Employment Minister Eric Abetz, watered down business gender reporting requirements.

4. Abbott at it again

Every week we have at least one backflip, broken promise or gaffe. This week there were several but the prize goes to Abbott’s description of living in remote communities as a “lifestyle choice”, slammed by his own key indigenous advisers as “hopeless”, “disrespectful” and simplistic.

People are starting to make lists. The SMH reminds us of 10.

The AFR cartoonist David Rowe showed Abbott with foot firmly planted in mouth while advisers bemoan that “it’s a lifestyle choice.”

Guy Rundle says Tony Abbott genuinely believes non-Christian societies are inferior.

Now I’d like to bring to your attention a poem by Graeme Henchel Why is Abbott a Dead Man Walking? It begins:

Was it justice, was it Karma?
Was it Murdoch, was it Palmer?
Was it lying and conceit?
Was it backbenchers fear of defeat?
Was it Mathias and Joe’s cigars?
Was it because we’ve stopped making cars?
Was it climate change denial?
Was it putting Julia on trial?
Was it the daughter’s scholarship prize?
Was it debt and deficit lies?

It goes on and on, ending with:

Was it the hubris and the swagger?
Was it Malcolm and Julie’s dagger?
Why will Abbott get the shove?
The answer is, ALL OF THE ABOVE.

5. Puzzling polls

Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation peers into the tea leaves, trying to make sense of the polls. Amongst the confusion is a cross-over between Morgan and Newspoll:

Newspoll is said to be the one pollies watch. I reckon that if 8 days earlier we’d had Newspoll on 45-55, deteriorating from 47-53, instead of Fairfax-Ipsos on 49-51, we’d now have a new prime minister.

6. Fairfax axes rural staff

Some 80 positions are being cut from Fairfax media staff in regional Victoria. Reporters will file, sub-edit and edit their own work, plus do their own photography.

Fairfax said it was “building a modern, stronger rural and regional network”.

Let’s face it – Fairfax owns a large slice of the rural press in Australia, and it’s being gutted.

Politics & Government

Abbott and the law

March 12, 2015 Brian 2 Comments

David Marr has turned his considerable forensic and rhetorical skills on Abbott in an article Tony Abbott running from the law in The Saturday Paper, the weekly version of The Monthly.

(You might be able to get free access to three articles a week by signing up. I took out a three-month sub to see how it goes.)

Rather than running from the law in then usual sense, Marr’s basic point is that Abbott has no feel for the law. In pursuit of political ends he actually shows contempt for it:

Abbott doesn’t set out to break the law. That’s not the point. But when the law stands between him and a quick win, he shows contempt for its values, its customs and the part they play in national life. (Emphasis added)

Abbott is pragmatic rather than principled – he does what it takes to win the contest at hand. What we expect from Abbott is:

minimum scrutiny by the courts, maximum power to government and close to nil concern for individual rights as Canberra pursues refugees in boats and lone wolf terrorists.

An example is the amendment last year of the Maritime Powers and Migration acts.

The amendment shreds our obligations under the Refugee Conventions and hands godlike powers to immigration ministers to decide the fate of refugees.

Malcolm Fraser called the bill: “The perverse creation of a government prepared to tear up the rule of law for its own political ends.”

Abbott’s attitude to the law can be seen in his response to a US court finding that there was no legal basis for holding David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay for five years:

“Whatever the legalities … he was up to no good.”

On several occasions now Abbott has ignored due process in declaring lone wolf terrorists guilty, using the most florid language. Within hours last September Abbott declared Omarjan Azari guilty of plotting random “demonstration killings” at the direction of a senior Islamic State figure linked to Australia.

Azari’s solicitor Steven Boland has attacked Abbott for “unprecedented intrusion by a sitting PM into criminal proceedings” and complained of “irreparable prejudice” caused to his client’s case. Abbott, he says, “has deliberately or otherwise spread misinformation that has no support in the evidence”.

The resu;t could well be Azari’s acquittal.

About a month ago Omar Al-Kutobi and Mohammad Kiad were arrested for planning a terrorist attack in Sydney with a knife and a machete. Immediately they were tried and found guilty by Abbott in parliament:

“I do not think it would be possible to witness uglier fanaticism than this, more monstrous fanaticism and extremism than this, and I regret to say it is now present in our country,” he told the house.

Marr says that respect for the law is a conservative value. Abbott is no conservative. PMs normally bridle at the restraints of the law.

Abbott has been willing to a remarkable degree to push the law aside to appease populist fears and populist contempt for human rights.

In responding to Gillian Triggs Abbott failed to recognise that the Human Rights Commission is one of the pillars of our justice system. Abbott descended into street-brawling mode in an attempt to win the point. In Abbott’s world inquiries are for stitching up an opponent. He thought he was being stitched. Forget the fact that children in detention are being damaged by public policy.

He forgets too, says Marr, that judges are trusted more than politicians. Abbott is playing to his base but with respect to the centre it looks like a losing strategy.

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 7/3

March 7, 2015 Brian 6 Comments

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Cutting funds to assist the homeless

Groups that provide aid to homeless people are set to start making thousands of their staff redundant from next month due to uncertainty over federal funding.

The National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, a funding agreement between the states and territories and the federal government, is set to expire on 30 June, with no assurance from Canberra that the arrangement will continue.

Homelessness agencies have warned that dozens of programs will be axed if the $115m in federal funding ceases, potentially putting the lives of rough sleepers and women fleeing domestic violence at risk.

Canberra public servants can’t even to provide a date for a decision on the funding arrangements.

More than 3,000 staff, who provide support for more than 80,000 homeless people, will be affected. Redundancy notices will start to flow from the end of March.

2. Cutting research infrastructure funding

Above we saw that the Government has no heart. It also has no brains. Christopher Pyne in an indescribably venal move has tied research infrastructure funding to the passage of his higher education reforms.

For reasons that are unclear, the government has singled out the research infrastructure part of the annual A$9 billion science and research budget and is threatening to kill it for the sake of the A$150 million earmarked to keep the infrastructure afloat.

Without looking at the cutting-edge science that the facilities produce, the research facilities support just about every sector of the Australian economy from agriculture, to mining to drug design and medical research.

There are more than 35,000 researchers who use our major research facilities, and these will be progressively locked out as the facilities go off-line. More than 1,700 skilled scientific and support jobs are under threat if the facilities are mothballed. Even now we are seeing the signs of losing the corporate knowledge and erosion of the skilled professional workforce as staff seek more secure career opportunities.

And perhaps worst of all is the sheer waste of more than A$3 billion in capital investment as well as the hard work that has gone into building up new capacity over decades.

Some innovative companies will take their research overseas.

The universities are on their knees begging. Adam Bandt has called it “parliamentary blackmail”. It’s beyond stupid. Words fail!

3. GP Co-payment is ‘dead, buried and cremated’

That’s what Abbott assured us this week. Medicare is still unsustainable, according to the Government, though this is questioned by experts.

Health Minister Sussan Ley says the Government still wants people who can afford to contribute to the cost of their healthcare to do so. Presumably this would mean a rebate indexed according to affordability. Is this practical?

The Government will continue its pause on indexation of Medicare rebates, for GP and non-GP items. This must be wearing thin with doctors. It started with Labor in 2013 and there is no indexation for inflation.

So far bulk billing rates have held up pretty well.

The Minister says she is consulting. There’s also plenty to read at The Conversation on sustainable health spending and Medicare reform generally.

4. Soldiers get 2 per cent pay rise

In another exercise in barnacle scraping, the Government relented partially on defence force pay at a cost of $200 billion over the forward estimates. Jacqui Lambie says they’ve still been dudded by one per cent, it’s still an insult and she is considering her embargo on supporting government legislation.

5. 300 more Australian troops to be sent to Iraq

Australia is to send about 300 more troops to Iraq, to help train the Iraqi army in its fight against Daesh, also known as Islamic State.

Mr Abbott says the contribution is prudent and proportionate and it’s in Australia’s national interest to stop the militant group from inspiring supporters around the world.

The new deployment was quickly supported by Labor, but opposed by the Greens and the Independent MP Andrew Wilkie.

Abbott was boasting that he sweats with the troops. He tries to have physical training with them when he is on their bases. He’s certainly pushing the national security issue hard.

Like Wilkie, Bernard Keane at Crikey doesn’t agree with the deployment. He says we are doing what ISIS wants us to do, we are endangering our home security, and in any case the Iraqi armed forces don’t do fighting, they do torturing, murdering and raping Sunni prisoners.

I wonder how much this exercise will cost!

Climate Change & Sustainability, Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

IGR – garbage in, garbage out

March 6, 2015 Brian 31 Comments

I’ve borrowed the title from The Australia Institute because it reflects how I feel about the Intergenerational Report.

Hockey told a business briefing “When people see some of the graphs in the intergenerational report they are going to fall off their chairs.” Richard Denniss said, yes, “we’re rolling around on the floor laughing”. He finds it “a deeply flawed document based on deeply flawed assumptions.”

Peter Martin warned us that when governments lose their authority, they try to scare us. Michelle Grattan warned that the government wanted the public to take several political messages out of the IGR:

Stated crudely, these are: first, that Labor’s policy settings would have taken us to hell in a hand basket; second, that but for the pesky Senate, the budget would have been in good shape relatively soon; and third, that despite the obstacles, the government is making progress towards bringing us to fiscal health.

She was right.

The Intergenerational Report is accessible here. See also the ABC article and The Conversation’s panel of experts.

Three scenarios

The Report paints three scenarios. The first dubbed “Proposed Policy” is the Abbott Government’s 2014 Budget. It would bring a surplus within five years. That is, if the revenue stream holds up as predicted, which we know it hasn’t. Also some ‘saves’ of the budget have been abandoned. That’s the first bit of fiction.

The second scenario is termed “Currently Legislated Policy”. That’s what the Opposition, the Greens and crossbench senators have passed. That will lead to a deficit of 6% of GDP in 2055.

The shock horror is in the third scenario, called “Previous Policy”. We are meant to believe that this is what the LNP inherited from Labor. In 2055 on this scenario the annual deficit would be a whopping 11.7% of GDP, with net debt at 122% of GDP.

The deception here is that the Report has not used Labor’s legacy as reflected in the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) prepared independently by Treasury and Finance and published under the charter of budget honesty in August 2013 before the last election, which had the budget coming into surplus in 2015-16. It has used Hockey’s first Budget Update, after he had added billions of dollars of debt.

The IGR is a document compiled by the Treasurer, not the Treasury. Chris Bowen says that Labor would legislate to have it compiled by the Parliamentary Budget Office to take out the politics.

Affordability

The Report has put in some scary figures like number of centenarians will grow from 5,000 or so now to almost 40,000 in 2055, spending on aged care and pensions will from from 2.9% of GDP to 3.6%. That’s an increase of 24% when our average income is forecast to lift from $66,400 today to $117,300, or 76%. If that is true (I have my doubts) then we can live very decently and still afford welfare.

Dependency ratio

A really scary figure given is the dependency ratio, which is the number of people of working age (15-65 year-olds) to aged people (65+). The dependency ratio is 4.5 now and will reduce to 2.7.

Again I say, why should we worry that the number of workers is reduced by 45% when each worker will be earning 76% more.

John Quiggin reckons it’s a weird trick that proves the IGR is nonsense. The concept assumes:

* Children aged 14 and under cost nothing to raise and required no public expenditure on schools, daycare etc
* Children leave school at 15. After this, they not only support themselves, but contribute to the support of those over 65
* People retire become eligible for age pensions at 65.

All three are wrong.

Climate change, the environment and population growth

Richard Denniss says the Report is unrealistic because it “barely talks about the threats of climate change or the enormous cost of building the new infrastructure that rapid population growth will require.”

Ian Lowe says:

There is no sign the government even recognises the most serious threats to future generations: liquid fuel security, climate change, water shortages, loss of productive land and loss of biodiversity. These issues require planning and commitment of resources now.

Rapid population growth to reach 39.7 million is taken as a given, not something we have a choice about.

On climate change Ben Eltham says:

Climate change is the dominant geopolitical fact of the future. It will shape the future more surely than tax takes or pension liabilities. It will reshape the global economy, threaten food yields, increase natural disasters, lay waste to Australia’s region and generate hundreds of millions of refugees.

Such blunt realities are absent everywhere from the 2015 IGR. It’s denial writ large, pure and simple. A larger blind spot – a more willful inapprehension of reality – is hard to envisage.

I’d have to agree with his bottom line:

You don’t have to take such shoddy work seriously, and as a busy citizen, you shouldn’t. The Intergenerational Report is not a serious attempt to make projections about government policy. It is an ornament, a prop in a policy theatre, a bell-and-whistle for the next Treasury lockup.

Like most such reports, the IGR will be quickly forgotten.

Update: The Parliamentary Library site Flagpost has a useful comparison of the four IGR reports so far.

Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff