Category Archives: Social Science and Society

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society, Sundries

The proposed GP co-payment is dead

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Along with apologising comprehensively to the Chinese, yesterday Clive Palmer announced that the proposed GP co-payment was not going to happen. Not one cent, he said. Palmer was effectively saying that as a wealthy country we can afford the health system we’ve got.

Well, I think that there won’t be a $7 co-payment. It’s just media beat up, you know, it’s not going to happen. And, you’ve got to remember that in Australia we spend 8.9 per cent of our GDP on health. In the United States they spend 17.2 per cent of GDP on health, yet 60 million Americans have no coverage.

I’m not sure he’s right about 60 million Americans having no coverage. In my mind it was 40 odd million and that was before Obamacare. fROM MEMORY bout the same number who are ‘food insecure’, that is they aren’t sure whether they will eat tomorrow.

Minister Peter Dutton, however, was saying that we need the co-payment because the health system is unsustainable. In other words, in the government’s view, we need as a matter of social and economic policy the poor to go to the doctor less. However, GP services are recognised as being in the front line as preventative medicine. Ignoring the health welfare of the poor, health policy aficionados question whether the co-payment would not actually cost the system more in the long run.

We can’t assume that the Government actually knows what it wants to achieve with its policy. Laura Tingle finds the government’s position completely muddle-headed and inconsistent.

No matter how much it may now criticise the AMA proposal, no matter how large a hole the proposal leaves in the budget, the government is yet to find its own way through the debate, or even clarify what the actual aim of its policy really is.

Apparently the AMA proposal, the one Tony Abbott personally asked them to put together, eliminated 97% of the projected budget savings. But Tingle says that it dealt with the equity problem and addressed

the very issue the government said it wanted to deal with when it first raised the idea of a Medicare co-payment before the budget.

That is, that those who can afford to make a contribution to the cost of going to the doctor should do so.

It should be remembered, I think, that savings from the GP co-payment initiative would not be used to pay off the deficit. Rather a research fund was going to be established which was going to save the nation, having lost the car industry, and find a cure for cancer. Or something.

Yet minister Pyne can threaten to take the savings out of general university research funding if his proposals re universities are not passed.

This is a government that far from tackling problems in an orderly way as they claim is resorting to ad hoc threats and bullying rather than deliberative policy processes. Part of the problem is accommodating Abbott’s signature policy initiative, the paid parental leave scheme. As Tingle says in this article:

Wherever Hockey, or other ministers go trying to sell the budget, for example, they have to try to explain how its paid parental leave scheme fits with spending cuts that hurt low-income earners hardest.

Culture, Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Remembering the Lessons from 9/11

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I am fan of of Rob Burgess of Business Spectator.  I particularly liked what he had to say about the IS beheading and our reaction to it.

Burgess starts by reminding us how we reacted to 9/11:

Whichever account of Bush’s actions one accepts, history now tells us that the US response to the Al Qaeda threat was exactly what terrorists would want.

Anyone old enough to remember the shock of those attacks will understand why the US was driven to define Al Qaeda as tantamount to a rogue state that could be tackled by a conventional war.

Not lunatics. Not criminals. But warriors who wanted a war … and the West was damned if it wasn’t going to oblige.

It was the wrong choice. We were damned because we did oblige, and the power vacuum in Iraq, and the massing of extremist forces in Syria, are some of the ghastly results.

In our ignorance, Australia also fell into the mistake of demonising Islam as a whole instead of the Islamic extremists who were behind 9/11.  In Australia 9/11 was used as an excuse by some to burn at least one mosque, throw stones at least one busload of students going to an Islamic school and rant and rave about hijabs.  Then there were the comments from some radio jocks as well as some of our politicians.

There are two dangers here.  The first is that we will be so busy trying to avoid “the mistakes of Afghanistan and Iraq” that we will fail to see the differences between what is happening now and what happened then.  (For example IS seems to be the foreign invaders this time around while the Kurds are the natives.)

The second is that we will simply mindlessly repeat the mistakes.  In Australia Abbott is already rabbiting on about how this (beheading) could happen in Australia despite al the anti terrorist laws we have in Australia.  His comments about “team Australia” aren’t really helping unite Australia and its communities.

Burgess had this to say:

We now seem to be again on the brink of allowing a force of between 10,000 and 17,000 extremists to define a conflict – with themselves as glorious warriors, rather than lunatics and criminals.

The brutal video of the beheading of James Foley is a symbolic missile fired into the heart of the liberal democracies that the IS fanatics so despise.

Their greatest joy is watching the missile explode and rip holes in our democratic political culture, when we could so easily choose to defuse its destructive force.

and

Civilised, democratic debate is the precious core of our society — and that makes it a target for the symbolic missiles sent by groups such as the Islamic State.

To the extent they rouse us to anger, and provoke ill-considered responses, as happened with 9/11, the missile can be said to have ‘exploded’. Let’s not let that happen again.

So what should we do this time round?

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Stiglitz on inequality

Joe Stiglitz certainly knows how to make a point, as he did to Fairfax Media in calling our budget changes to health and education “absurd” and a “crime”. He did this on the basis of the relative performance of our system as against the USA. In health, for example, America spends twice what we do as a percentage of GDP for three years shorter life expectancy.

In his Fairfax article he claims:

Two big lessons of economic research over the past 10 years are that inequality is not the result of inexorable laws of economics but rather of policy; and that countries that adopt policies that lead to high inequality pay a high price – inequality not only leads to a divided society and undermines democracy, but it weakens economic performance.

In this he explicitly diverges from Piketty, as he said in conversation with The Conversation:

I think he [Piketty] is absolutely right to emphasise the increase in inequality that has occurred. I think he is absolutely right in his key idea that the period from World War II to 1980 was unusual in the history of capitalism, capitalism has typically been associated with high levels of inequality.

What I differ with is I don’t think it is the inexorable result of economic laws, of economic forces. It is a result of policies and politics, it is the result of rent-seeking behaviour, which the laws and regulations help create or don’t do enough to counter. There is almost a tone in his book that this is just the way of capitalism, and my view is that the kind of inequality that we’ve seen is really a result of the fact that we don’t have a well-functioning market economy.

So to Stiglitz markets are a human artefact and need regulation, and the nature of laws and regulations governing markets matters. As do state provisions and interventions.

Joe Hockey defended his budget saying you can’t expect equality of outcomes, only opportunities. Stiglitz has a more nuanced and interactive view:

While there are many dimensions to growing inequality, perhaps the most invidious is inequality of opportunity. Western democracies pride themselves in providing a level playing field, in which all who would work hard can prosper. But it’s a myth, and nowhere more so than in the US, in spite of the rhetoric about the American dream. The life prospects of a young American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than is the case in other advanced countries. And there is a vicious circle: inequality of outcomes leads to inequality of opportunity which leads to further inequalities of outcome. The prospect for America’s future is thus still more inequality of outcomes and opportunity.

Stiglitz says that only about 8% of those in the bottom half of the income scale get a college education. He says our Australia’s HECS system works and is the envy of the rest of the world.

But Australia is neither the best nor the worst in terms of equality. In his article in The Guardian he compares our Gini coefficient unfavourably with that of Norway, a resource-rich country that has done a particularly good job of managing its wealth for the benefit of all citizens. He links to the OECDiLibrary. I can make more sense of the CIA Factbook which places Norway on 25 and Australia on 30.3, close to the European Union average of 30.6. The USA looks third world at 45.

On the one hand we are the best in the Anglosphere, with Canada on 32.1, the UK on 32.3 and New Zealand on 36.2. On the other, we are worse than half of Europe.

A third area where we do better is in “basic welfare support and systems of social protection.” In America with

almost one out of four children living in poverty, and with deficient public support, the prospects for their future are not rosy – and this will inevitably translate into weaker overall economic performance for the country.

In Stiglitz’s ideal world one’s opportunities are not constrained by the circumstances of birth. Society should help individuals to become whatever they can be, which is in turn better for society and the economy. In Hockey’s world society gets you to a mythical starting line from which reward is dependent on individual effort. Social support is not universal. The social safety net has holes in it through which fall the unworthy.

I sense that for Stiglitz freedom and equality are integrated through a sense of justice, as for John Rawls. Full individuality is attained in a cooperative and mutually supportive social context. This contrasts with the individualistic competitiveness which seems a leading feature of Hockey’s world.

One day listening to Radio National I did hear about research which purported to show that societies with a Gini coefficient of 33 or more tended to become socially dysfunctional and corrosive. Unfortunately I did not get a name or a link. It seems to me, however, that the sense of outrage felt towards Hockey’s budget stems from the sense that it is taking us as a society into territory where we feel that the social contract between the people and the state has been breached.

Social Science and Society

Stiglitz on the budget changes to health and education

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“A crime”, “absurd”. That’s what he said.

Asked by Fairfax Media to nominate the two biggest mistakes the government could make that would take it down the American path of widening inequality and economic stagnation, Professor Stiglitz chose the budget changes to university fees and Medicare. Each would make Australia more like the US.

Stiglitz_j

“Countries that imitate the American model are kidding themselves,” he said. “It seems that some people here would like to emulate the American model. I don’t fully understand the logic.”

In the lead-up to the budget Education Minister Christopher Pyne said Australia had much to learn about universities from overseas, “not least … from our friends in the United States”.

Professor Stiglitz said Australia had “a system that is really a model for the rest of the world”, and deregulating fees would move the entire system in the wrong direction.

“Trying to pretend that universities are like private markets is absurd. The worst-functioning part of the US educational market at the tertiary level is the private for-profit system,” he said. ”It is a disaster. It excels in one area, exploiting poor children.

“If you’re rich your parents can pay the fees, but if you are poor you are going to worry about how much debt you’re undertaking.

“It is a way of closing off opportunity and that’s why the US doesn’t have educational opportunity.

“While we in the US are trying to re-regulate universities, you are talking about deregulating them. It really is a crime.”

Similarly with the health system. We have one of the best systems in the world for access and outcomes. Yet we are trying to take it in the direction of the USA which sits at the bottom of the pile.

He said the typical inflation-adjusted income of a US household was lower than it was 25 years ago. The typical inflation-adjusted income of a male full-time worker was its lowest in 40 years.

“You have to say that the American market model has failed. It’s a very strong statement for someone who believes in a market economy. But at the bottom it’s even worse. The minimum wage is about where it was almost a half century ago.”

Asked what Australia had done right that the US had not, he said: “unions”.

“You have been able to maintain stronger trade unions than the United States. The absence of any protection for workers, any bargaining power, has had adverse effects in the United States.

“You have a minimum wage of around $15 an hour. We have a minimum wage of $8 an hour. That pulls down our entire wage structure.”

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Asylum seekers returned directly to Sri Lanka?

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SRI LANKA NAVY SPECIAL BOAT SQUADRON

Refugee advocates and the Tamil community are increasingly concerned that a boat load of 153 Tamil asylum seekers has been handed over the the Sri Lankan navy.

There was regular contact with the boat from last Thursday to last Saturday morning, when communication ceased.

On Thursday the boat started leaking oil. On Friday they were almost running out of water and some of the younger people were not well. One adult also was “facing some physical conditions”.

The Government is refusing to comment on whether the boat even exists.

Daniel Webb, Director of the Human Rights Legal Centre, says that if refugees are returned directly to the place they are fleeing from without their claims being processed there can be no clearer breach of our obligations under the Refugee Convention.

The fact that the boat may be in international waters has no relevance. The idea that the asylum seekers’ claims could be assessed in transit is ludicrous.

Turning boats back to Sri Lanka is completely different to turning them back to Indonesia, which is a transit country and as such not the source of the fear of persecution or worse.

The Guardian says that:

Sri Lankan asylum seekers are subject to the “enhanced screening process” in Australia, which has been condemned by the UNHCR as an “unfair and unreliable” process for determining refugee claims as it involves short interviews, often without the presence of a lawyer.

But

In October, Morrison said he was “completely comfortable about the process”, adding: “If you’re coming here to try something on to get access to Australia from Sri Lanka, you’ll go straight back.”

Surely asylum seekers would not be subject to ‘enhanced screening’ in transit!

The Sri Lankan high commissioner in Canberra said he had not been informed by the Australian government of the boat’s existence and hence he was in no position to comment.

The boat actually departed from India and the nationality of all on board in unclear. India is not a signatory to the refugee convention.

The image above is from AAP courtesy of SBS who report that the Sri Lankan military says it’s unaware of any arrangements with Australia to return asylum seekers.

From the SMH on Monday:

Ian Rintoul, of the Refugee Action Coalition, said it had become apparent that Australia had intercepted the asylum seekers.

“It has been 48 hours and under Scott Morrison’s own rules he would have had to announce there had been an incident at sea by now, so you can assume they have been taken off their boat.”

More generally, I reported last week, the Government is introducing new rules for assessing asylum seekers:

  • People arriving without travel documents will be refused protection visas unless they can provide a “reasonable explanation” for not having identification.
  • A lower threshold for assessing harm to returning asylum seekers who have sought complementary protection, where the chance of harm is more than 50%.
  • Asylum seekers who have arrived by boat will be refused visas unless the minister determines “it is in the public interest to allow them to do so”.

As SBS highlights, this means that asylum seekers facing a 49% chance of death or torture could be sent home. Surely the cross bench in the Senate will vote the legislation down.

While it is too early to rush to judgement in the case of the Tamils, Scott Morrison never ceases to appal so nothing would surprise.

Morrison_Sowhothebloodyhellareyou _500

I’m not sure of the source of that image which I had on file, but it has the title Sowhothebloodyhellareyou!

Social Science and Society

Rudd, Gillard and Beyond

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Troy Bramston’s book Rudd, Gillard and Beyond has on its front cover “Why Labor lost and what it must do to win again and stay in power”. It is short, strikes a reasonable balance on the whole and contains a good deal of new material. It focusses primarily on the narrative arc of the Labor Party in and out of power since the Whitlam years. The clash of personalities and the political scheming are seen in that context.

In this piece I write about the book and it’s subject, rather than attempt a review as such.

Bramston draws on Whitlam’s foreword to The Whitlam Legacy (edited by Bramston) which forms a ‘valedictory’ message to the party he led in opposition and in government for a record 11 years. He draws on interviews with Hawke, Keating and Rudd for the book, also Beazley and Simon Crean as former leaders. Gillard declined to be interviewed.

On the 2010 leadership change, Bramston subscribes to the view that Rudd’s administration at this time was increasingly centralised, chaotic and paralysed in terms of decision-making. His communication with the people through the media became confused.

That is the view I got from Bramston. Not as vivid as the language apparently used in Philip Chubb’s book, according to Stephen Mills’ review of Bramston, but contra Mills, in substantial agreement with Chubb.

Crean view is that cabinet worked well under Hawke and Keating but never worked as a vibrant decision-making forum under either Rudd or Gillard. Under Rudd cabinet was effectively replaced by the ‘gang of four’ (Rudd, Gillard, Swan and Tanner). Towards the end it too was supplanted. Gillard complained in the email, reproduced in full, that she sent Rudd two days before the challenge, that work to be done in broader consultation had been folded into the Prime Minister’s Office and decisions communicated to the back bench of which she knew nothing.

Gillard was increasingly concerned and tried hard to rectify matters. Along the way she did sound out certain people about putting herself forward, but her claim that she made the final decision on the day is probably true. Certainly she knew about the plotting and did not discourage it, but resolutely refused to make herself available. This is a reasonable summary of Gillard’s position:

‘Gillard was the last person onboard,’ says one MP… ‘There was no strategy, no planning, no move on Rudd in advance. Gillard did everything she could under the worst possible circumstances to help. He just wouldn’t listen.’

According to Mills’ review Rudd couldn’t listen, he was in such a state.

Certainly Gillard’s staff prepared a speech for her in the event she became PM, Bramston says at least two weeks before the event.

Gillard denies that she gave any instruction in this regard. In my view, even if she did, Gillard did nothing unethical. Nevertheless the manner of coming to the prime ministership was highly problematical in public perception and hence in political impact.

Bramston’s scoop is an email Gillard sent Rudd and Alistair Jordan two days before the famous meeting. This graphically shows how even Gillard was left in the dark, with back-benchers being briefed on matters of which she had no knowledge.

It is arguable that Gillard put herself forward in the best interests of the party, just as it is arguable that Rudd’s desire to regain the office took no shape until Gillard was in a hopeless position politically.

Bramston records Rudd’s account of what went on in the famous meeting in June 2010. Rudd said that Gillard agreed he would continue in the job until an election was due to be called. If the government was then not in a winning position he would hand over. Then Gillard’s adviser, Amanda Lampe, entered the room without authorisation to say that Gillard was needed on the phone. Gillard took the call in his outer office, came back and said that she had decided to challenge. Rudd took this as reneging on an agreement, rather than changing her mind in the face of new information. Rudd thereupon terminated the meeting.

Bramston says that the person on the other end of the phone was Stephen Conroy, who told her that it was all over the news and there was no way she could exit the meeting and say everything was OK. Quite clearly Rudd would be given no space to rebuild his position.

Rudd came to regard Gillard’s action as an ‘original sin’ and sought to right the wrong. Bramston simply asserts that Rudd began his attempt to regain the leadership immediately, although I’ve seen no evidence that he became active in that regard before around December 2012, when Gillard airbrushed him from Labor history in a speech to the national ALP convention. Certainly Bramston cites no evidence.

On the leaks during the 2010 campaign Bramston says:

It is widely understood within Labor that these leaks came directly from Rudd or his supporters.

This is lazy journalism and neglects the possibility that the leaks could have come from Abbott supporters within the public service.

Bramston rather neglects the role of the media in the political process. He does mention the egregious attitude the media took to Gillard, but it comes late and is underdone.

Bramston cites opinion poll research at various points. In June 2010 he notes a UMR report that Gillard had a positive rating of 22% in doing her job. Rudd was on net -17%. The report compiled ‘word clouds’ about the politicians. Rudd was seen as arrogant, untrustworthy, disappointing, hopeless, dud, liar, incompetent and trier. Gillard was seen as strong, positive, intelligent, competent, good, smart and confident. This research was shown around caucus, some say by Gillard herself.

There awere no word clouds in 2013, but the ratings were very much reversed.

In the 2013 election Rudd’s best chance would have been to project calmness and rely on the fact that he was neither Abbott nor Gillard. Bramston’s summary account is that Rudd blew a winning position by over-agitation, hair-brained ideas, and trying to do everyone’s job accept his own. Certainly the election campaign office was staffed by Gillard loyalists, who had worked up a campaign for Gillard.

There is a serious question whether Rudd in fact saved the furniture. Bramston describes detailed ground work done in marginal NSW seats by the party and by the unions throughout Australia.

By the end of the campaign, 396,408 phone calls had been made by over 500 volunteers to undecided voters. US research shows this is the most effective way to target undecided voters, other than doorknocking.

The unions worked on similar strategies across the country including targeting their own membership.

Bramston has a succinct summary of what each Labor prime minister achieved in office and notes their failures. Whitalm perhaps comes out best. Bramston feels that history may become kinder to both Gillard and Rudd. Amazingly he thinks Gillard did her best work in foreign affairs. For example, securing an annual leaders forum with India and China had eluded her predecessors.

One of her biggest failures was to do exactly nothing about party reform, when her party needed it most. Part of Rudd’s legacy is that he started the party reform ball rolling.

Keating is perhaps most eloquent about what Labor is about:

‘I believe the public has accepted the Labor model: an open, competitive, flexible economy grafted to a social wage guaranteeing access and equity in health, education, in superannuation and in social policy generally.’

He says Labor is losing the debate about how you facilitate the organic development of that construct.

Shorten’s shorter creed:

‘Labor believes in building a good society. A good society is founded on jobs, education, healthcare, good retirement incomes, a fair go at work.’

Shorten admires Hawke’s ‘consensus’ political model, Keating’s ‘bravery’ and Whitlam’s ‘reform vision’. Bramston thinks he’ll need all three.

Finally Bramston gives his own ideas on party reform under the headings of

  • leadership reform
  • candidate selection
  • unions
  • conferences, and
  • members.

Problem is all changes need to be approved by the ALP convention which is not due until 2015.

Overall Bramston’s book is good value. I’d also unreservedly recommend Mungo MacCallum’s The Mad Marathon: the Story of the 2013 Election for what it covers. Jacqueline Kent’s Take Your best Shot is useful on Gillard’s prime ministership. Kerry-Anne Walsh’s The Stalking of Julia Gillard is brilliant on the role of the media, but marred in my opinion by a visceral hatred of Rudd which affects her objectivity.

Social Science and Society

A glass more than half full

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Economist John Edwards questions the notion of an economic crisis (Laura Tingle in the AFR, paywalled, unfortunately) in relation to the resources boom. For at least nine years, Ross Garnaut has been warning about “The Great Complacency”, that we are squandering the benefits of the resources boom and are ill-prepared for its aftermath. Andrew Charlton, talking to Phillip Adams, has a nuanced view, but sees difficult days for us if China crashes, builds less infrastructure and needs less of our iron and coal.

Charlton regrets the eight tax cuts delivered by Costello and Howard. People often talk of Norway, but Chile too has long created a sovereign wealth fund to lock in permanently the benefits of mining. We have largely spent the benefits on consumption.

Edwards fingers those tax cuts also, but questions the very nature of the ‘boom’. Edwards points out that in the 10 years prior to the resources boom Australia grew more rapidly than during the socalled boom years. Other factors, such as the GFC, have had a greater impact.

He says we haven’t just “complacently dozed through an unparalleled opportunity to reshape their nation and prepare for the challenges ahead.”

“Australians have been saving more, investing more, working more and learning more”, he says.

“During the mining boom Australia’s capital stock has increased by nearly two-thirds, a larger share of Australians have jobs, the share of young people in training and higher education has increased markedly, household saving has increased from zero to one-tenth of household disposable income, national gross saving has risen to well over one fifth of GDP, the current account deficit has narrowed, household credit growth has slowed sharply, and Australian banks have dramatically reduced their dependence on foreign borrowing and thus the vulnerability of Australia’s financial system to global shocks.

“Of the biggest investment boom in Australian history, well over four-fifths has been matched by Australian savings.”

(I wonder how that last fact matches with the often repeated claim by Hockey et al that we are borrowing overseas to pay the interest on our government debt.)

Edwards big emphasis is on human capital, which we have been developing and will serve us well, with further development, in the future.

Economic change is about more than money. During the years 2003 to 2013 a net 2 million long-term migrants settled in Australia.

“This vast, transformative migration, the full effect of which has yet to unfold, has occurred not only without serious controversy, but almost without notice”.

The socalled budget ‘crisis’ is mainly a revenue problem. It will be fixed by some restraint, certainly, but mainly by restoring revenues to historic percentages of GDP. I pointed out here that Hockey has manufactured a crisis by limiting revenues to 23.9% of GDP. Lifting that by a notch or two, manageable over time by bracket creep, would do wonders for the deficit.

Edwards argues that we need “continuous reform and adjustment to entrench our prosperity, but in order for it to be deliverable it has to be based on a recognition of success and making sensible claims for the outcomes”. In that we need to be careful that ‘reforms’ don’t advantage one group to the disadvantage of another.

Nevertheless, the high dollar, now based on our comparatively high interest rates rather than the price of commodities, which have been falling, is still a drag on traditional areas such as agriculture and tourism as Charlton notes. But overall, he says, mining employs far fewer people than knowledge based services and elaborately transformed manufacturing.

Edwards says that it is in these areas, exporting services and goods to the developing markets of Asia, that our future opportunities lie.

Edwards says that people no longer believe the crisis story, “the story of prolonged failure; imminent catastrophe, sweeping advantages that flow from the kinds of reforms that are sometimes advocated.” Tingle says this:

poses some big questions for our political class about whether they need to, or are even able to envisage, a different script to the one that has dominated their working lives and institutional memories.

There’s an opening for a political leader who excites us with vision, just as Kevin 07 did perhaps a little in an era now fading into the past.

John Edwards is an economist who is a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a member of the Board of Skills Australia and Adjunct Professor at the John Curtin Institute for Public Policy at Curtin University. In January 2012 he was appointed one of three members of the Australian Government’s Review of the Fair Work Act. He just published ‘Beyond the Boom’, a Lowy Institute booklet.

Lateline also has the story.

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society, Sundries

High Court rules federal funding of school chaplains invalid again

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As The World Today story makes clear, it is the funding methodology rather than the school chaplains program itself that has been, for the second time, ruled unconstitutional by the High Court.

High court_250When Toowoomba father of six Ron Williams won the original High Court challenge to the chaplaincy program in 2012 the Gillard Government passed ‘catch-all’ legislation which sought to enable to make such grants directly to schools. This ‘bandaid’ solution has now failed. While the court case has only been about the school chaplaincy program specifically a precedent was set that placed a question mark over some 400 other Commonwealth direct funding programs, past and present. I gather these programs had been implemented by the executive without legislation.

It appears that the Commonwealth will now have to use legislation specific to the program, by which means it can make special purpose payments to the states with as many conditions as it likes. This legislation would then have to run the gamut of the senate, which may be difficult, if Labor comes to its senses and opposes the legislation.

I agree with Angelo Gavrielatos, head of the Education Union:

We’ve always opposed this program, considering it a badly designed and quite frankly not in the interests of our kids and what they actually need.

It also compromises the secular traditions of public schools. This money is better directed to specialist, expert support for our students. What our students need are expert trained school counsellors, psychologists and welfare workers.

It’s also important to note that this program has been costed at $250 million. This is at the same time when there’s been a real cut in funding for students with disabilities.

The Abbott Government is so far reserving its position until they examine the ruling, as one would expect.

There is a summary article by Michelle Grattan at The Conversation.

Retiring Senator Louise Pratt has condemned the program, saying that it has driven gay and lesbian children to self harm:

Senator Pratt said an online survey by gay rights group All Out, which attracted 2200 responses, had uncovered dozens of firsthand student accounts that describe chaplains as being “explicitly anti-gay”.

One respondent said their school chaplain had described gays and lesbians as “unnatural, indecent and perverse”. Another said a gay friend had overdosed on medical pills after their school chaplain said being gay was a “degrading sin” that sends people to hell.

“As well as the two stories I have just quoted, students described chaplains helping them to ‘pray the gay away’ and advising them to sleep with a member of the opposite sex to ‘correct’ their same-sex attraction,” Senator Pratt said.

“One very serious story involved a student being told by a chaplain that they should leave home because they had homosexual parents . . . Regardless of the outcome [of the High Court challenge], it is important to see this program stopped.”

Proponents of the program say such incidents would be rare and in breach of the code of conduct under which chaplains operate.

According to Peter Sherlock schools have been able to use the money to employ secular counsellors. In the 2104-15 budget, however, this was narrowed to chaplains from religious organisations alone.

Sherlock, who is Vice-Chancellor at University of Divinity, says that the program recognises that schools have a socialising role in the formation of a child that goes beyond the door of the classroom and the skills and content imparted there. He thinks, however, the chaplains from religious organisations will almost inevitably be motivated to proselytise, and the secular counsellors would be more appropriate.

I couldn’t agree more. Problem is, part of the purpose of the program is to win votes from particular sectors of the church-going community.

Climate Science, Social Science and Society

Blue sky

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In Spanish speaking Latin America, and now in some other countries, there is a form of protest where people bang pots, pans, and other utensils to make a political point or register their displeasure. It’s particularly effective in densely populated cities, where people can protest without leaving their homes. The Spanish term is cacerolazo.

In pot banging diplomacy quantity matters. There needs to be critical mass before the authorities feel compelled to respond.

Potentially the Blue Sky movement could colour our suburbs blue, but if not countless conversations will be engendered and you never know where that might lead!

After the last election some friends of my younger brother Len, feeling blue, decided to turn blue into an optimistic colour, and invented the Blue Sky movement. To join all you have to do is ‘like’ the Facebook site put something blue on your front footpath visible from the road, take a photo and post it on the site. And take the Blue Sky Pledge, which includes reducing your own emissions, displaying blue for 12 months, and encouraging others to join.

Here’s one example:

Blue sky_10325198_306417569521903_2138384990446088881_n_500

We’ve just joined. This makes me wince:

Brian and Margot_1913442_305184202978573_4031178450688941073_o_500

I’m actually standing with my heels on a pile of yet to be distributed forest mulch, so I’m not that tall.

The blue plastic is an offcut from a new swimming pool cover. Having a swimming pool is not recommended to produce low electricity bills. We’d gladly fill it in and grow vegetables, but that would cost a small fortune. We are planning to post a laminated Blue Sky flier on the wooden fence, which would be easily visible from the footpath, frequented by walkers heading for nearby parks.

If you click on “Community” or “About” at the head of the Blue Sky FB page and then click “more” you’ll get the full Blue Sky spiel.

The goals of Blue Sky are –

* To provide a simple and easy way in which people can show their support for action on climate change.

* To encourage participants in their attempts to reduce their own carbon footprint.

* To encourage others to take climate change seriously

* To build the support for meaningful action and a sense of urgency for this action to be undertaken.

* To encourage as many people as possible to make the Blue Sky pledge.

I’ve included the link to the Blue Sky Facebook page in the sidebar list of Selected Climate Sites. Blue Sky FB is often used to share links.

Whereas cacerolazo requires considerable effort and is necessarily limited in time, once you make the effort of joining Blue Sky the deed is done and the effect continues. And it costs nothing.

Note: I outlined several forms of activism including Blue Sky in Climate clippings 87 last November.