Category Archives: Sundries

Posts on sundry matters of life the universe and everything: Culture, Environment, Life, Politics & Government, Science, Social Science and Society, Technology etc.

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 7/3

6 Comments

voltaire_230

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. 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

31 Comments

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

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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.

Politics & Government

Puzzling polls

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Mark Kenny at the SMH believes the Fairfax-Ipsos poll has thrown Tony Abbott’s leadership a lifeline:

Australian voters have thrown Tony Abbott a lifeline just as his internal opponents were shaping to dump him, with a Fairfax-Ipsos poll confirming a pro-government shift is under way.

In a result set to strengthen the Prime Minister’s hand in the short term, the Abbott government has staged an unlikely recovery and, while still trailing, is now within striking distance of overhauling the ALP lead at 49-51.

Coalition pollies seem to believe it and that’s what matters. Abbott is certainly acting like chief rooster in the chook yard again.

I’m inclined to think that Abbott is safe from his own mob until budget time, but perhaps not yet safe from voters’ ire.

Firstly, the Ipsos poll is new on the block, replacing Nielsen as Fairfax’s pollster. Adrian Beaumont says:

An important qualification with Ipsos is that all four of its polls, conducted since it replaced Nielsen as Fairfax’s pollster, have shown a clear lean to the Coalition relative to other pollsters. As a result, this poll should be interpreted as being at least 52-48 to Labor.

Peter Hartcher thinks the poll shows Abbott as a dead man walking. Fully 72% of voters say Abbott does not have the confidence of his own party. Only 21% say he does. Sportingbet says Abbott has a 75% chance of being removed from the leadership before the next election.

Indeed the ‘attribute’ section of the poll is simply awful for Abbott. Go here and scroll down.

Voters were asked whether specific attributes applied to Abbott and Turnbull. Only 39% thought Abbott competent (Turnbull 74%). 36% thought him trustworthy to Turnbull’s 55%. Only 33% rated him a strong leader to Turnbull’s 60%.

Abbott’s ratings are all negative, and all at historical lows.

This week’s Essential Report has Labor ahead TPP 53-47, the same as last week and a slight improvement on two and four weeks ago, which both came out at 54-46.

Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods of Essential Media Communications attempt some analysis. They say that some issues just don’t cut through. For example:

for all the bluster, the controversy around the Attorney-General and the Human Rights Commission has not captured the attention of the general public. When asked to pass judgment on the performance of the Commission, 44 per cent concede they don’t know enough to form an opinion. While it has dominated the national headlines, the reality is that most people just don’t follow politics that closely.

National security, however, is an issue that people think matters and pay some attention to. Three-quarters (75%) think the threat of terrorism happening in Australia has increased over the last few years – up from 57% in September 2014.

Newspoll tells us that 51% think Abbott is best at handling the nation’s security, whereas 31% go for Shorten. Last week Abbott stood in front of six flags to tell us about strengthened home security measures. This week he found eight flags to backdrop his announcement of 300 troops on the ground in Iraq.

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Lewis and Woods say, however, that Abbott’s handling of security matters is divisive. What he is doing may appeal to the Coalition base, but may not get him over the line.

To be frank, I’ve been amazed at how Abbott appears to have extricated himself, for now at least, from his near death experience. Where the story goes next, I think no-one can tell.

Politics & Government

NSW election winnable by Labor

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The LNP appear to be cruising in NSW with opinion polls giving them 53 to 54% of the two-party preferred (TPP) vote. Yet Antony Green says they are vulnerable in the forthcoming election, just over two weeks away on 28 March.

One reason is the pattern of preference flows may emulate the recent Queensland experience. NSW and Qld use the same optional preferential voting system.

…the recent Queensland election saw a 20% decline in exhausted preferences and a similar size increase in preference flows to Labor. This factor alone was enough to add another 3% to Labor’s state wide 2-party preferred vote compared to polls. If the Queensland experience is repeated in NSW, then the published polls are over-stating the Coalition’s 2-party preferred vote.

Green gives a couple of other complicated technical reasons why the Baird Government may get a fright.

Also, as in 1991 when Greiner was forced into a minority government against the odds, Baird’s policies may play well to the Liberal heartland, but not so well in the marginal seats. Apparently the Liberals are promising to sell electricity assets, which may not go down well in the marginals.

Meanwhile Labor has announced a saleable array of policies with a focus on education, health, privatisation and coal seam gas.

  • Electricity supply would be kept in public hands. A Labor government would use the profits from the electricity network to improve services and invest in hospitals and schools.
  • Every new school will include child care or before- and after-school care facilities on site.
  • There will be funding for 200 specialist maths and science teachers in primary schools.
  • On the health front, the major promise is to abolish the co-payment for chemotherapy drugs.
  • There will be a moratorium on coal seam gas activity in NSW, with a permanent ban on the north coast and the special areas of the Sydney drinking water catchment.

Furthermore on health:

Mr Foley also promised an additional $1.7 billion for health infrastructure.

Mr Foley said Labor would introduce nurse-led walk-in medical centres to take pressure of emergency departments.

They would also build a new public hospital at Maitland and complete major redevelopments at St George and Westmead hospitals, he said.

On corruption, apparently the answer is Jodi Mckay who came through the ICAC hearings with her reputation intact and has become the party’s “pin-up girl”.

“People ask has NSW Labor learned, has NSW Labor changed,” Mr Foley said.

“I say four words: look at Jodi McKay.

“That is the face of the Labor Party I lead – bright and brave and honest.”

According to Wikipedia there are 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly, so 47 is the magic number. According to Antony Green’s election pendulum, 69 seats are LNP, 20 Labor, two Greens and two Liberal voting independents. The TPP vote in 2011 favoured the LNP 64-36 approximately, a bigger thumping for Labor than Qld in 2012.

So Labor could do it, just, but anything other than a comfortable LNP win will generate tremors in Canberra.

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Brandis – doing his job?

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Graeme Innes was a human rights commissioner under five attorneys-general from both sides of politics. He writes that George Brandis was the only one to question his integrity.

Innes was appointed in 2005 under Philip Ruddock, who said he must do the job “without fear or favour”.

I disagreed many times on policy issues with Howard ministers and staffers. Our discussions were sometimes “free and frank”, usually civil and never personal. My views were regularly questioned, my integrity was not.

Under Rudd Robert McClelland became attorney general. He said to commissioners:

Sometimes you’ll give us a kicking. Sometimes you’ll support us. That’s your job.

He took the Ruddock approach, sometimes questioning our recommendations, but never our integrity, as did attorneys-general Nicola Roxon and Mark Dreyfus.

Things changed under Brandis, he says. Now on the Triggs matter, Innes says:

Part of our democratic system, and the rule of law, provides that a key duty of any attorney general is to defend judges and statutory officers doing their jobs, because they are not in a position to easily defend themselves.

In attacking her, Brandis is not doing his job. Innes told The World Today:

“It changed under that of George Brandis, where the officers ourselves, the commissioners ourselves, the statutory officers ourselves were questioned, rather than what we were putting to the Government and the attorney from the perspective of the Human Rights Commission.

“Our integrity was questioned in the same way that Gillian Triggs’ integrity has been questioned in the last month.”

Yesterday Brandis’s peers in the Senate passed a no confidence motion in him, declaring him “unfit to hold the office of Attorney-General”.

The motion was supported by Labor, the Greens, the Palmer United Party’s two senators and Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie. South Australian independent Nick Xenophon and Family First Senator Bob Day both sided with the Government.

Brandis argued that the Human Rights Commission is not a court and not protected like the judiciary:

It should never be above criticism. No institution of the executive Government should be beyond criticism and beyond scrutiny. Not the ministry, not the public service, not agencies within the executive Government.

This Parliament should be a guardian, a fierce guardian of its rights to call members of the executive, and agencies of the executive Government into account.

On that basis it is the duty of politicians under parliamentary privilege to attack public servants who can’t defend themselves.

Michael Bradley, the managing partner of Marque Lawyers, says that Brandis has trampled all over the conventions that govern his own role as first law officer. In the the Westminster system the Attorney-General is supposed to have a higher duty, beyond politics, as the primary defender of the rule of law and our system of justice. He sees the HRC as included in the system of justice. It’s important that the HRC should be free to say what the Government does not want to hear. His bottom line:

If Triggs’s testimony is correct, the fact that Brandis sought to remove her from her position by offering her another job raises serious questions about his integrity. Where his actions leave us is in the untenable situation that his working relationship with Professor Triggs is irretrievably broken.

Consequently, one of them will have to go. It shouldn’t be her.

Denis Muller at The Conversation argues that The Australian newspaper has been running a concerted campaign on the Triggs issue. The paper’s position is ideological, he says, and inappropriate for the fourth estate.

ABC FactCheck has found Gillian Triggs’ assertion that in the first months of the Coalition Government the time children spent in immigration detention “was reaching quite exceptional levels” is correct.

Innes also criticised Tim Wilson’s appointment as human rights commissioner without a selection process and fresh from the Institute of Public Affairs, whose policy was to abolish the Commission. This left Susan Ryan covering disabilities as well as age discrimination, an unfair burden.

My earlier post is here.

Life

Seeing is believing

2 Comments

You may have seen this dress from tumblr:

Dress_tumblr_nkcjuq8Tdr1tnacy1o1_500

It’s meant to be black and blue, or white and gold. Some can see it both ways and some see it differently after going for a walk.

I think it’s blue and gold – definitely!

For different reactions, see Business Insider.

I’ve heard two different academics explain what’s going on. I’d say that colour comes to us through light waves, but is constructed subjectively by each of our brains.

I think the clue on this one is that they used blue and black and ran a yellow light filter over it.

From Mark’s Facebook here are a couple of pics riffing off the original:

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By the way, we used to have a carpet at our place until we ripped it up. I saw it as grey, my wife saw it as green. She was right, of course!

Life, Politics & Government, Social Science and Society, Sundries

Saturday salon 28/2

65 Comments

voltaire_230

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. Australia Post could ‘go bust’ without changes to letter delivery rules

Australia Post looks set to lose $6 billion over the next 10 years if it continues to deliver letters on the next day in the cities and within two days in the bush. The volume of letters was down 8.2% in the first half of this financial year.

Some 97% of the mail that’s sent comes from corporations and governments.

I think the idea is to charge $1.00 for a letter and $1.50 if you want it delivered the next day. And lose 900 jobs in the corporation.

It seems that service delivery can only be undertaken if it makes a profit.

2. Productivity Commission on Childcare and Early Childhood Learning report

The report is disappointing, according to Gerardine Neylon of the University of Western Australia. It looked at the methods of payment of subsidies, but ignored issues like the poor pay of childhood workers. The report showed no awareness of the importance of early childhood experience in later life chances, of personal growth and economic productivity etc. Australia’s performance in the sector is crap.

Australian early childhood education and care lags behind its OECD partners due to low financial investment in the sector. The OECD recommends countries spend a minimum of 1% of GDP on early learning. The OECD average is 0.7% and Australia spends 0.45%.

3. Attacking the Census

“Know thyself” said Socrates and a stack of other Greek sages.

The Abbott Government would rather not, says Ben Eltham in pondering why the Abbott government is considering cutting funding to Australia’s census – or even axing it altogether.

If there is a fundamental signature to this government, it is its determination to see Australia and the world through a conservative prism. Where reality doesn’t fit the Abbott government’s predilections, that reality is ignored.

One aspect of this tendency is a puzzling irrationalism. No government in modern Australian history has been more hostile to evidence, science and reason than Tony Abbott’s.

The census is invaluable for demographers, social researchers and anyone interested in public policy. Social analyst David Chalke:

I think it’s nonsense. I think it’s just silly. You cannot run a country without this basic data and I think to contemplate reducing the quality of the census is absurd.

Yes, it costs:

The last census held in 2011 was the nation’s largest logistical peacetime operation requiring 43,000 field staff to deliver 14.2 million forms to 9.8 million households — at a total cost of about $440 million.

I make that about one 10 tenth of one per cent of the Commonwealth budget. Small if you want to know what you are doing with the rest of it.

4. Metadata coming our way

Labor members of a federal parliamentary committee have acquiesced in the plan to force telecoms providers to store the metadata of all phone and internet users for two years.

The Joint Intelligence and Security Committee has been investigating the Abbott Government’s proposed laws since last year.

It’s recommended some changes to improve oversight and prevent the data from being misused.

As it happens the upper bound of what the scheme might cost is $400 million.

The committee has taken note of journalists’ concerns. They’ve included some safeguards but have come up short in protecting sources.

5. Doing the undoable

The McClure report on social security has recommended that the whole social service payments data system be rebuilt. The current system, known as ISIS (Income Security Integrated System), has been described as a “turbo-charged Commodore 64”. For those who came in late the Commodore 64 was one of the early microcomputers of the 1980s which I think had all of 64K of memory.

McClure recommended this to the Howard Government. The Brits tried to do it a few years ago. At current rates the rollout will take 1500 years. A suitable challenge for the man who stopped the boats.

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Abbott shoots himself in the foot – again

6 Comments

Chris Uhlmann and Sabra Lane say that pressure is building in the Liberal Party to remove Prime Minister Tony Abbott and that backbenchers and ministers say the Malcolm Turnbull now has the numbers. The leadership issue has risen again because of the brutal attack launched on Gillian Triggs as President of the Human Rights Commission. Ben Eltham says:

In a show of belligerence that has stunned seasoned political observers, the Abbott government has declared a personal vendetta against one of the most respected lawyers in the land. Triggs’ personal ethics have been questioned, her competence and impartiality attacked, and her conduct impugned.

Turnbull has certainly put some distance between himself and Abbott on the matter. He says that criticism of Triggs “misses the point” the point being the children in detention. Further, he said that Triggs was “a very distinguished international legal academic”.

Eltham again:

The findings of The Forgotten Children report should shame us all. Triggs found that children have been sexually and physically assaulted in federal care. Some children have been detained for more than 27 months. Many are denied education. Unaccompanied children are locked up in adult compounds. They are mentally and emotionally traumatised. There have been multiple instances of attempted suicide and self-harm.

A government with a scintilla of compassion would have welcomed the report, and redoubled its efforts to get children out of these hell-holes. And, if the Abbott government had wanted to, it could have spun the findings in its favour. For instance, the report found that there are fewer children in detention now than under the previous Labor government.

Instead the Government advised her that it had lost confidence in her and suggested that her legal talents might otherwise be employed by the Government. She declined. It then launched a public attack, bringing up also her finding in the Basikbasik matter.

A galaxy of legal scholars has signed a letter supporting Triggs, pointing out, inter alia, that the Government is not obliged to take her advice, a point she understands well.

Distinguished retired lawyer Hal Wooten tells why he signed up. He respects Triggs personally and professionally, the facts of the report speak for themselves.

Once again Mr Abbott has proved a loose cannon, but this time his wild firing threatens grave pain and injustice to a courageous and honourable public servant, and the undermining of a much needed national institution, as well as obscuring the terrible effect of detention on innocent children.

Richard Flanagan says that some day a PM will apologise for what it is now doing. He thinks:

The only accusation of Gillian Triggs with the ring of truth is that she has lost the confidence of the government – but then so too has Tony Abbott. Gillian Triggs’s real crime is that as human rights commissioner she spoke up for human rights with a government that has no respect for them.

He also sees women and children as being at the bottom of the pile, as it were. Triggs is being attacked as a woman speaking up for children.

Bill Shorten says Tony Abbott sank to ‘a new low’ over Gillian Triggs’s treatment and that Abbott was ‘psychologically unsuited’ to the prime ministership.

Annabel Crabb says the Government is thumping Triggs when it could/should be thumping Labor. It has also presented Labor with the moral high ground.

Jonathon Green has written the speech Abbott could have made about Triggs’ report, with Triggs at his side.

One point is that there were 1500 children in detention when the LNP took over. Now there are 126.

For the record, from Berard Keane at Crikey, this is what Chris Moraitis from Brandis’s department told the Senate hearings:

“There were essentially three points that I was asked to make. One was that the Attorney had lost confidence in Professor Triggs as chairperson. He retained significant goodwill towards her and had high regard for her legal skills. In that respect, he was asking me to formally put on the table or mention that there would be a senior legal role, a specific senior role, that her skills could be used for.”

Brandis later quibbled over the word “position” being tossed around, emphasising that the offer was for a role. But an offer there surely was, later denied by Julie Bishop representing Brandis in the House of Representatives.

Meanwhile much of importance, such as the McClure report on social security, is not being discussed.

Politics & Government

Abbott’s war on terror

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TONY ABBOTT NATIONAL SECURITY ADDRESS

The tricky thing about Man Haron Monis and the Lindt Café siege, is that he acted alone and was taken rather as a harmless buffoon by the security agencies. The terror threat from random actors is very real. Annabel Crabb says that

It’s clearly an escalating threat situation. Anyone carrying on today about how Tony Abbott is just cooking it all up to save his own skin is thinking wishfully.

She says that there are now:

Four hundred current investigations by ASIO, sixty-two new biometric screening gates to catch people travelling on false passports, forty-nine extra AFP officers across Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra working on the problem of Aussie jihadists abroad, and so on.

Certainly Abbott is playing to a political strength. Newspoll tells us that 51% think Abbott is best at handling the nation’s security, whereas 31% go for Shorten. 7% say neither, and 11% are uncommitted.

What the Government intends to do was spelt out on Radio National’s PM:

  • There will be a national counter-terrorism co-ordinator “to bring the same drive and focus to this as we’ve brought to Operation Sovereign Borders.”
  • On immigration a harder line will be taken to “keep out people with security questions over them.”
  • “The Government will develop amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act so that we can revoke or suspend Australian Citizenship in the case of dual nationals.”
  • The Government is looking at “suspending some of the privileges of citizenship for individuals involved in terrorism.” Privileges susceptible to suspension could include “the ability to leave or return to Australia”, “access to consular services overseas” and “access to welfare payments”.
  • The Government will take action against hate preachers by “enforcing our strengthened terrorism advocacy laws” including “new programs to challenge terrorist propaganda and to provide alternative online material based on Australian values, and it will include stronger prohibitions on vilifying, intimidating or inciting hatred.”
  • Muslim community leaders should speak up more. When they talk about Islam being a religion of peace that they should mean it.

All this doesn’t actually amount to much, according to Annabel Crabb, apart from enforcing existing laws and some blowhard (my term) urging.

Bill Shorten offered bipartisanship, saying that Labor would “engage constructively” with the government but counselled:

Haste and confusion is never the friend of good, sensible security in the future.

Abbott had also said quite explicitly that individual liberties might have to be sacrificed to ensure the safety of the community.

According to Grattan:

Shorten said there always should be a strong presumption in favour of individual liberty. “This presumption should only be reduced, rebutted or offset to the extent that current arrangements are proven to be inadequate.”

I’m concerned about what Abbott and Brandis might do in returning to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Frankly I’m concerned about anything Brandis does after getting out of bed.

I’m concerned about revoking citizenship. Once people are Australians, we should take responsibility for them rather than shunt them to a different jurisdiction, or virtually render them stateless.

Sangeetha Pillai argues that there’s more to be lost than gained in stripping citizenship. She says that most of what is proposed that is achievable can already be achieved by other means. In other words existing laws suffice. She says “commentators have been quick to note that amendments along these lines carry the risk of exacerbating feelings of social disaffection that can underpin extremism.” Her bottom line:

The limited potential effectiveness of the proposed measures, combined with the challenges of implementation and the possibility for them to be counter-productive, suggests that the losses may outweigh the gains.

I’m concerned also that there might be hassling of Muslim’s and consequent increased radicalisation.

Abbott’s words about Muslim community leaders were, according to Michelle Grattan:

“I’ve often heard Western leaders describe Islam as a ‘religion of peace’. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it.”

Shorten and Julie Bishop were quick to distance themselves from these remarks. One Muslin community leader suggested that Abbott should engage in anything he chose except politics. I understand that some community leaders declined to attend a special briefing.

Randa Abdel-Fattah has a fine piece on the ABC religion and Ethics site:

Flanked by a row of Australian flags, Tony Abbott, like a priest performing a rite of passage, formally inducted Australian Muslims into the category of Australia’s primary Other.

The Prime Minister’s stated intention was to provide the nation with clarity and reassurance – just in case the decade-long stream of moral panic, manufactured fear and Islamophobic sentiment had left Australians in any doubt as to who successive governments deem as “un-Australian.”

In a way, the Prime Minister has done Muslims a favour. For he has made explicit what is at the heart of this government’s war on terror (picking up where previous governments left off). It has never been about targeting a radical minority or national security per se. The real struggle is to re-configure our social, discursive and symbolic relations around a politics of us and them.

There are many tragic consequences to this state of affairs. But at least the government has now laid bare the fact that it is prepared to hold social cohesion, justice and national security to ransom in its war on terror.

I’ll finish with this Wilcox cartoon from August last year:

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I’m sorry, Annabel Crabb, the problem’s for real, but Abbott isn’t – not entirely. Guy Rundle says Abbott should act like a statesman. It seems to be beyond him.

Politics & Government

Abbott’s battles back, but will he make it?

3 Comments

Abbott has two big challenges right now. One is to settle his party, organisational and political, down and the other is to cream Labor in the polls.

On the latter it was one step forward with a long way to go. Morgan saw the LNP improve from 43-57 to 44-56. Still in wipe-out territory. The only demographic were the LNP heads Labor in the TPP vote is the 65+ group.

In Newspoll the LNP improved from 43-57 to 47-53, a difference worth writing about. Nevertheless it leaves Labor with a comfortable winning position.

The Greens were unchanged at 12 per cent.

The papers are making much of Bill Shorten’s net approval rating, which dipped from +2 to -14. Abbott’s ‘improved’ from -44 to -43.

Shorten still heads Abbott as preferred prime minister 43 to 35, with Abbott closing from a hopeless 48 to 30 thumping last time.

In personality terms Abbott is a shocker. The Abbott-Shorten scores are:

    Understands the major issues 52-68

    Cares for people 55-71

    Arrogant 77-46

    Likeable 40-64

    In touch with voters 33-63

    Trustworthy 43-59

They were remarkably similar on Experienced, Decisive and strong and Vision for Australia.

On handling issues they stack up Abbott-Shorten as follows:

Australia’s economy 45-37

National security 51-31

Health and Medicare 30-56

Education 33-53

Asylum seekers 51-32

Climate change 24-55

With that one the scores should add up to 100, with the shortfall made up of Neither and Uncommitted. These totalled from 14 to 21%.

Politically Abbott is playing to his strength with his ‘war on terror’ which I hope to post on soon.

It is possible to battle back from a desperately losing position, as Howard did in 2001, largely on the back of a war on asylum seekers.

He did have his party behind him.

True, after the liberals had lost the blue ribbon seat of Ryan in a by-election and party president Shane Stone sent him a memo accusing the government of being “mean and tricky”. Essentially Howard took notice.

The “mean and tricky” leak is now being compared to Fairfax’s publication of excerpts from two candid and blunt emails from party treasurer Phil Higginson. RN’s PM reporter James Glenday:

it’s now obvious the Prime Minister’s grasp on power is being actively undermined by a steady stream of leaks.

Abbott:

Plainly there is this desire on the part of some to damage and destroy this government.

But who? The Drum looks at the leaks that rocked Australian politics politics. All were damaging and the leakers were never discovered. Could be one of the seven ministers who are said to have Abbott on notice.

Guy Rundle in a delicious (for lefties) article at Crikey (paywalled, unfortunately) says we are we are watching the throes of a dying government:

Like Howard in 2007, Abbott is politically dead — he just doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.

How good is this? Seriously, how good is it? I know I should start a piece about the Abbott government in some more serious vein, about the new stuff about redrawing the line between security and freedom being the desperate act of a dying government but no less dangerous for that, but ehhhh …

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Politics & Government

They tell us lies, but are they clunkheads?

7 Comments

Back in 2010 just after the election and before the Gillard minority government had been formed, Laura Tingle wrote:

There are two possible explanations for how an opposition presenting itself as an alternative government could end up with an $11 billion hole in the cost of its election commitments.

One is that they are liars, the other is that they are clunkheads. Actually there is a third explanation: they are liars and clunkheads.

But whatever the combination, they are not fit to govern. (Emphasis added)

I visited this theme again in 2013 before the election, when Tingle took a look:

at where the PEFO numbers leave the LNPs budget task and finds that, at best, $25 billion more in ‘saves’ will be required.

She was commenting on the competence of the Joe Hockey/Andrew Robb team. Robb has of course since been replaced by Mathias Cormann.

Peter Martin has now written a searing critique of the Abbott government’s economic performance against what they tell us. Cormann told the ABC

the economy was “heading in the right direction”. He wanted “to build on the achievements we made in 2014”.

Martin comments:

That year began with a quarterly rate of economic growth of 1 per cent. After the budget, it slid to 0.5 per cent, and then to 0.3 per cent. It’s falling, rather than rising. The direction is down. (Ignore the through-the-year figures Cormann quoted. They make the budget look good by including the very strong economic growth that preceded it.)

Here’s what the Reserve bank said:

“In Australia the available information suggests that growth is continuing at a below-trend pace, with domestic demand growth overall quite weak.”

It’s weak and it’s bleak. It isn’t heading “in the right direction”.

Hockey and Cormann will tell you that while unemployment is growing, employment is too.

The Reserve Bank points out that monthly hours worked have scarcely changed since December 2011 despite three years of population growth. They barely moved at all in 2014.

Hockey told us the poorest Australians “either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases.” They do. Petrol is a bigger part their budget than it is for the rich.

Hockey said:

his own wealthy electorate of North Sydney had “one of the highest bulk-billing rates in Australia”.

Make that one of the lowest in Sydney.

Hockey said that typical Australians pay nearly half their income in tax. They don’t. Even those on $200,000 pay only 36%.

Then this:

Hockey said Australia was on track to run out of money to pay for its health, welfare and education systems. The figures put forward by his then health minister suggested otherwise. In ten years the cost of Medicare had climbed 124 per cent, the cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme 90 per cent and the cost of public hospitals 83 per cent. But Australia’s gross domestic product – the money we would use to pay for these things – climbed 94 per cent.

Trust has evaporated, and without trust consumers and business lack confidence, which has been sliding since September.

Specific businesses are at a standstill. Universities don’t know what fees they will be allowed to charge, students enrolling don’t know what fees they will eventually be asked to pay, doctors don’t know what will happen to their incomes, electricity generators don’t know what will happen to the renewable energy target, big businesses don’t know whether they will be hit with the 1.5 per cent paid parental leave levy and what it will be used for.

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Focussing on the budget, Alan Austin at Independent Australia finds a revenue megafail, all of the government’s own making.

Failures in revenue include:

    1. Closing off $7.6 billion in annual revenue from the carbon tax

    2. Closing off $3.4 billion revenue from the mining tax

    3. Closing off $3.6 billion from changes to tax and superannuation rules

    4. Failing to pursue $1.1 billion shifted by multinational companies to offshore tax havens

    5. Failing to pursue other tax avoidance schemes

    6. Failing to pursue tax evasion

    7. Failing to forecast resources revenue write-down

    8. Failing to anticipate falling revenue from corporate sector

This comes on top of the earlier post in which Austin found 40 expenditure items where money was wasted. Such as the Italian Carrara marble panelling Defence is putting in a Canberra building, to take one at random.

On the revenue megafail, Austin says, all were Coalition decisions, the deterioration has been dramatic, we got precisely the opposite of what was promised, it will take a treasurer and finance minister with a high level of competence, courage and authority to restore the situation, and finally, as the experiences of Spain, Ireland, Hong Kong, Venezuela and other countries show, damage done to an economy in a short time can take decades to repair.

On debt Austin says:

The Abbott Government inherited the best-performed economy in the world in 2013. Some say the best the world has seen since data collection began. Within nine months, however, ABC Fact Check confirmed deficits for the forward estimate period had doubled over Labor’s level. Now, after 17 months, net government debt has increased over Labor’s by 34.6%. It’s on track to have doubled by this time next year.

I think the initial question about liars and clunkheads answers itself.

Chris Bowen promises us a warts and all budget narrative. We’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile Hockey is setting up to scare us to death with the intergenerational report.

See also

Hockey’s debt and deficit mess.

Abbott explodes his economic credibility