Poor bugger. Some Liberals might like to reconsider their tactics. When you bring someone down in a dirty, grubby manner, this is sometimes an unintended consequence.
Archive for August, 2005
I recently suggested to Mark that we nominate our best posts of the last month or so and swap them. Mark liked the idea. I also sent him a draft of my next column for the Courier Mail. Mark asked to post it on LP so, being an easy candidate for flattery, I agreed with unseemly haste.
One thing led to another and so here I am - with my own login and all as a guest or irregular blogger. Who knows? We’ll see. For anyone who’s interested, I wrote out my own (centrist) ideas about politics in an early post of mine on Troppo.
Anyway this column from Wednesday’s Courier Mail expresses my dismay at the latest turn of events by which every galah in the pet shop is now talking about the need to lower top marginal tax rates — that is tax cuts for those earning more than 125,000 squid (as Ali G would say).
As I argue in the column this is of some seriousness for the ALP because so many of those arms of government for which the labour movement had high hopes either make life worse for most working people (eg. tariffs) or are ambiguous in their effects helping ‘insiders’ and hurting ‘outsiders’ and even creating some outsiders (as I argue is the case with most IR regulation — including the basic wage).
I think most people who thought about it much would probably always have imagined that tax and transfers are the most powerful policy means of addressing economic inequality. But with other means looking both politically and economically shaky, it’s no time to be giving up the citadel.
As I argue, strongly redistributive tax and transfer systems were at the heart of how we managed to engineer the ‘Australian miracle’ of 15 years of strong steady economic growth (still counting) whilst tax and transfer policy undoes most of the growing inequality that the market began to generate starting in the early 1980s — or perhaps the mid to late 1970s.
Now it seems that Peter Costello is one of the few people who is prepared to counsel caution in jumping on the lower rates bandwagon. So we’re at a pretty pass. Of course when the Coalition gets around to cutting the top marginal rate (its hard to see how they can resist it now) the ALP will look seriously silly objecting to it. Anyway, as I do every week, I’ve posted my column up at Troppo.
Note by Mark: For a previous discussion on the tax debate at LP, see Naomi’s recent post. And also, please make Nicholas welcome as a new LP blogger.
Cutting edge new media outfit, Crikey, as Tim Dunlop notes, has a new feature where you can email them your favourite blog posts. Details here. The shorter Crikey - email a post you like to blogs at crikey dot com dot au - I think (though am not sure) that only those who pay for the site will get to see the posts highlighted there, and I wonder why they don’t just link to a few blogs they recommend on their free page, but hey - the ways of the old new media are mysterious to this humble blogger.
After Mark’s very eloquent (and I suspect very pissed - the more red wine he drinks, the more Catholic he gets…) effort on the solipsistic film meme, I don’t quite know how to follow up. But Zoe has kindly tagged me. I’m actually quite a private person, and I also don’t want to see the movie of my really weird and very exciting life made, but I do think - because I’m keenly aware of the issue of representation as a woman - I’d like to be played by an amputee like me. That doesn’t give me too many options. There’s one, though, and she’s gorgeous, though blonde (I’m a brunette) and missing both legs below the knee (I’m missing my right leg above the knee - hence my predilection for leaning left) - and she’s a genuine movie star in the most obscure auteurial tradition of American arthouse - the Cremaster cycle. Ladies and gentleman, I give you, starring as Kim - Aimee Mullins. I’m sure she’ll do me proud. By the way, my will prevents biographies, but I’m asking Mark to write the authorised novelisation of my so-called life. He’s too old to win the Vogel. Anyone know of a literary award for authors under 40 so he can get a move on with this exciting contribution to the future Canon�…
Ps: Almost forgot. I’m tagging Liam, Andrew Bartlett, Miss Piss, Rafe Champion and of course, Redrag Rob.
The lead story on last night’s edition of the 7:30 Report was on Intelligent Design. There is no need to rehash old posts but some comments by Colin Bunnett from Focus on The Family Australia are worth noting:
One of the largest battering rams that’s been used against the family in this century has been the argument solely of evolution.
Now I’ve been told that Intelligent Design is a matter of science not faith yet Colin Bunnett has given the game away here. You might as well say that general relativity was one of the largest battering rams on reason that lead to postmodernist relativity. It is equally specious reasoning. Intelligent Design is once more revealed to be a battering ram in the culture wars not an objective scientific investigation.
The last comment from Colin Bunnett is quite revealing:
GEOFF HUTCHISON: The fundamental question is whether intelligent design is about science or religion. Is it to be measured or philosophically argued and in which classroom does such a debate belong? Do you have to prove the existence of God?
COLIN BUNNETT: You see, that’s the impossible, because how can the created understand the creator?
This is a nicely disingenuous dodge. Intelligent Design advocates fail to realize that they are placing expectations on and making assumptions on understanding their creator. It is indeed about proving the existence of god by default and strengthening one’s belief. This is the faith that dare not speaks its name as wonderfully put by Jerry Coyne recently.
For a debate that is allegedly about science I wonder why Australian ID proponents rely on theological sleights of hand and political lobbying rather than scientific research to support their cause.
Kate’s tagged me. Who would I want to play me in the film of my life? I’d like to actually start writing a learned post about Hal Hartley movies and the representation of our lives which might be worthy of a Fenella Kernebone, but that would be evading the question, would it not?
So, although I have left many textual and emotional fragments and traces of my life scattered around the world and the interwebs - for good and for ill - for a biographer to compile my life (and remember - thinking of your life in this way enforces responsibility - for instance, I have to stand by whatever I said in the minutes of the 77th Council of The University of Queensland Union and perhaps in particular when I was briefly President of the Union, and articles I wrote for Semper Floreat because someone could potentially access both from the library of my Alma Mater), I doubt there will ever be a film.
There seems to be a database issue with comments on some threads - where there’s a disjunction between the reported number of comments on the thread itself and the discussion sidebar - and some people are experiencing odd things when they try to post a comment. All this is under investigation, and hopefully there’ll be a fix in the not too distant future. In the meantime, if you could note exactly what happens when something goes wrong on this thread, it’ll help Rob to get a grip on what’s going wrong.
Two more interesting entries on the debate over the acceptability of wearing the Hijab have surfaced today.
First, the Times columnist, Matthew Parriss, a former Tory MP, but quite a sensible bloke and worth listening to on many issues, has taken a trip to Sydney. Parriss is honest enough to talk about his gut reaction:
Just behind me was an Asian family. They looked pretty “Western”, if that is what you say in Australia. The two boys were in snazzy trainers, the father in smart-casual clothes: just an ordinary family on a day’s outing, clutching posters and souvenirs from their sightseeing. Except that the woman ‚Äî presumably the wife and mother ‚Äî was swathed in black from head to toe. The full veil covered her face so that only her eyes were visible.
Maybe this should not have struck me as remarkable. I see it often enough in Tower Hamlets. So I was surprised by my reaction to the full veil worn there. But my response was immediate, and reflexive. I thought: “This is completely unacceptable.”
I did not (and do not) mean “unacceptable” objectively ‚Äî anywhere in the world or at any time in history. I meant here, now, in Sydney; or in any 21st-century Western country whose history, outlook and ways of life are rooted in European thought. It jarred. Something about it offended a norm: not so much a norm of apparel ‚Äî exotic fashions come and go ‚Äî as a norm of openness and women’s rights.
Now, for all I knew, the woman had chosen to go out like this and would not have wanted to uncover her face; but still I felt it was not right in Sydney: not right for her and not right for the open society of which she was part. Whether or not she felt oppressed, the condition oppressed her and it should not be seen in the streets of a modern, liberal country. I realise that this sounds imperious but I record what I felt, and the feeling was strong.
I’ll come back to Parriss but I also want to discuss what Tim Dunlop has to say.
Elsewhere: Tim’s post now carries an endorsement from C.L., who’s previously expressed some interesting opinions about Islam.
As a compliment to Mark’s post on Wayne Swan’s book I finally got my fingers going to blog on a book that chronicle the lives of those that work for the minimum wage.
Elisabeth Wynhausen is a journalist for The Australia who took a year’s unpaid leave to experience life working on, or below, the minimum wage. She worked as a kitchen hand, in a factory sorting eggs, as a cleaner, in a nursing home and took on the checkouts in a department store. Her experiences are chronicled in the book Dirt Cheap.
Initially Wynhausen sets up some rules for the experience. Which she admits that she broke when the stark reality of living on the minimum wage became apparent. Also, she only stayed in each job for 2 -4 weeks. This was long enough to outline a chapter before moving on. She did not have to put up with months or years working at that level. She could quit at any time. Those she worked with could not. She also had savings as a financial buffer in case of emergencies.
The jobs that Wynhausen undertook during the course of the book shared certain characteristics. One was the difficulty of finding cheap accommodation close to the place of work. If accommodation was close it ate up a significant chunk of wages. The other option if affordable accommodation was found was a lengthy commute. Once employed, any notion of the employees being consulted on scheduling on shifts or explanation regarding the nature of their work did not happen. Those on the minimum wage are expected to be neither seen nor heard. Respect it not a part of the new economy. It flows through from the top. The fecklessness and callous bullying of middle management is passed onto the supervisors who then infect the employees. It becomes a vicious cycle of amoral rule by law and regulations. It does not matter if it seems pointless and absurd, that is how things are and you better shut up if you want to be offered more work.
Dirt Cheap reveals that notions of class still exist.
David McKnight has a new book out - Beyond Left and Right: New Politics and the Culture Wars. I’ve only just started reading it, and Mark and I both bought copies today when we had lunch, so I’m sure in due course he’ll provide a more measured assessment. But the title and indeed the first chapter spur me to some reflections.
McKnight hits the nail on the head when he says that the terms “Left” and “Right” originated in the seating arrangements in the post-Revolutionary French National Assembly. Those who stood (or sat) for liberty, equality and solidarity were on the Left, and those who opposed them were on the Right. But the Left/Right distinction was and is a moveable feast. Even on the French Revolutionary Left, Girondins and Jacobins disputed actively. The Revolution of the Enlightenment already contained with in it the Left of the Bourgeois opposition to conservatism and the Radical Left who privileged equality over liberty. And this model lead, in time, to the pathologies of revolutionary Communism, and, through a different genealogy, to the supposedly more right wing tradition of Social Democracy.
But let’s not forget Lenin attacked Left-wing communism as an “infantile disorder”.
This should in itself indicate that McKnight’s claim that the lines are currently blurred between Left and Right presumes some sort of essentialised historical past when everyone knew what side they were on. That’s far from the truth, as any serious student of history knows. There is no fixity to the Left/Right distinction - only contigency in history.
Nevertheless, I’m sympathetic to the argument of the great Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio (sadly deceased last year) in Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Tradition that despite changing hegemonies, shifting discourses and the winds of time, the Left will always emphasise equality as the most important term of the triadic Enlightenment ideal - and understand liberty as resting both on equality of opportunity and community or solidarity.
Elsewhere: There’s an interesting discussion about the balance between equality and liberty at wsacaucus.org by Guy.
One interesting by-product of the tax stoushes that Naomi wrote about the other day might be an awareness of how few Australians are in the top bracket, and how many are struggling along with 30-60k household incomes (and that’s before we even talk about the large number of really poor people on welfare and/or very low incomes). There may or may not be a case for tax reform at the top end, but Emerson and Swan are quite right to say that fixing the welfare to work barriers and meaningful tax reform for the great majority of Australian citizens are far higher priorities. In this context, Wayne Swan’s book Postcodes: The Splintering of a Nation might be an instructive read for citizens, and particularly commentators and journos.
It’s not hard to assume from the assumptions that underlie most media reporting (with some distinguished exceptions like George Megalogenis) and interviews by the likes of Maxine McKew that the Canberra elites seem to have great difficulty understanding that over a decade of economic growth doesn’t mean that most Australians are rolling in dosh, driving SUVs, feeling aspirational, obsessed with property, building McMansions, troubled only by whether to go for the platinum as opposed to the gold Visa card, and so on. It’s been really weird watching McKew’s face as various Labor pollies and ACTU folks have explained the circumstances and choices which beset rather than empower most working Australians.
Sociological research - beginning in the 1960s with the debate over the (then) new phenomenon of the affluent worker - has shown that most people have very little idea of the prevailing wage levels and distributions across the economy as a whole. Rather, people pick what they know as a comparator. Thus, journalists like McKew or pollies like Costello who think it’s important to preserve uber-generous super lest Parliament become populated by useless timeservers, are probably comparing their own generous remuneration to the much higher levels of professionals and business people with whom they interact. Similarly, white collar workers in most public sector organisations earning in the low to mid 40ks will tend to compare their wages to those below them and above them and think in terms of what they could get through their next pay increment or promotion.
Hi, I’m the blogger formerly known as Irant.
As of tonight that pseudonym Immanuel Rant has kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
The main reason to kill of Ranty was that I felt the pseudonym had runs its course. I was fond of the moniker but was starting to feel that pseudonymity was becoming confining. Tim Dunlop has been discussing the validity of pseudonyms recently. And that did get me thinking. Not in a you are either for pseudonyms or against pseudonyms manner but as to why I was blogging under Immanuel Rant. And I decided that it was time for a change.
Another factor was a struggle, not so much with ideas, but putting the ideas down coherently (well as coherent as I can get) onto paper. The past few weeks has seen many attempts at posts but nothing that has gelled and hence remain unfinished on my hard drive. So this is definitely part of a reinvention to get the ‘ol creative juices flowing.
Also unmasking myself would put paid to certain speculation regarding why myself and Immanuel Rant were never seen in the same room at the same time and why we shared the same address. I am so over that question.
Mark still kindly allowed me to keep the keys to the plush, purple velvet confines of LP so for now, I shall make my home here. The email address I was using for Irant will soon be no more and if anyone desires, shaun.cronin at gmail.com will work just as well.
Now if only I could convince Mark to give me the keys to the LP liquor cabinet.
It’s a while since we’ve had a post for any and all feedback on the blog. We’re definitely moving to having multiple bloggers, and some other changes are afoot - including making the author of a post more identifiable and solving the problem of the long comments thread by displaying only a certain number of comments at a time with a link to go forward and back. So I’d be interested in hearing from bloggers, commenters and readers about these things, and absolutely anything else - constructive feedback always welcome.
As a student in the practice of journalism I believe the occupation of a journalist, in any capacity, is not one to be taken lightly. Journalists are charged with collecting, synthesising and disseminating information on behalf of the rest of the population, and hence have significant power. With this power comes a responsibility to use it for the good of society.
Earlier this month, Radio 3AW host Derryn Hinch revealed on air what he believed to be the location of notorious sex offender Brian Keith “Baldy” Jones after his release. This resulted in the house coming under repeated attacks by vigilantes, even though the location was incorrect. Hinch has come under attack from some who believe he should not have broadcasted the location, regardless of its accuracy; but in reality, Hinch was obligated to make the residents of the street in question aware of a released paedophile in their midst.
A similar case is explored in a May 15th article by Orson Scott Card as part of his column in The Ornery American. Card’s article is a conservative diatribe resulting from Newsweek’s allegation that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet as part of interrogation tactics against Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and the following riots and death in Muslim nations. He too argues the article should not have been printed, regardless of its accuracy.
Even if the allegations about Quran desecration were completely and absolutely verified, why in the world would you publish the information during wartime?
But they dwell so blindly within the cocoon of their sheltered world, where it’s just awful for somebody to offend “multicultural” people… that it doesn’t occur to them that they could just keep their mouths shut and avoid damaging America and putting Americans all over the world in danger.
Card then goes on to imply that the story was only reported because it would damage the American government, which, to him, is despised by the supposedly liberal media. Quite obviously this is partisan paranoia, but not really the issue at stake here. Card is downright wrong when he lambasts Newsweek for publishing the allegation.
In both these cases, the media was aware of information and, as their purpose dictates, made it available to the public — this is a responsibility of the media and of the journalists who comprise it. They are not responsible in any way for any unfortunate events perpetrated by people who read their stories — those people chose to commit violent acts, the responsibility is on their head, not that of the journalists.
It is said that knowledge is power, and this is certainly true. By informing the public of events, you empower them — this is what the media is all about, informing and empowering the public. If an individual is informed, he or she is empowered to make better decisions regarding his or her own life and how he or she views the world. This is a good thing and is vital to the continuing success of the human race.
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