Peter Costello has announced an inquiry into how competitive Australia’s tax system is. As Andrew Leigh points out, it’s not hard to “establish the facts” which is apparently the purpose of the exercise according to Cossie. It’s much more likely that Costello is either trying to establish some wiggle room to back away from his previous opposition to cutting top marginal rates, or that he’s trying to avoid further flak in the tax debate (”let’s wait for the inquiry to report”…), or both. But he should carefully ponder some other insights from Andrew Leigh, who argues in a recent paper [link to pdf] that the case for addressing effective marginal tax rates at the lower end of the income distribution is far more pressing than giving tax “relief” to the top 5% of households, whom the last round of tax cuts favoured disproportionately. There’s nothing more illuminating to economic and social policy debates than some actual facts rather than self-interested arguments for “reform” which translate into skewing the progressivity of the tax take even further.
Archive for February, 2006
If you’re in Melbourne and you’re stuck for something to do on Tuesday night, you’re in luck. Canadian post-rock band Broken Social Scene are playing The Corner, with further dates to follow in Perth and Sydney. The tagline from Handsome Tours’ website sums them up neatly:
Toronto-based musical collective Broken Social Scene are revered the world over for creating a thrillingly unique & defiant style of classic, exuberant indie-rock. Led by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the band feature a revolving cast of musicians & use an astonishing array of instruments, including trombone, violin and French horn, to deliver relentlessly infectious melodies amidst their guitar-fuelled bliss.
“Guitar-filled bliss” hits the mark. I’d listened to one of their CDs before, but having gone to the first Australian gig last night at The Zoo, I wasn’t prepared for what was simply one of the best live shows I’ve ever been to. The sheer musical exuberance of what was largely instrumental driven rock was astounding, and a fabulous time was had by all. Except perhaps climatically for the very hairy band themselves, who were unprepared for the always horrendously hot conditions of The Zoo (it’s a great venue - but basically a top floor warehouse space in an old building where the fans in a Brisbane summer give regular thanks for wall fans). But BSS were the very opposite of an icy breeze from Canada, and very ably supported by Melbourne’s Sally Seltmann from New Buffalo whose eccentric and ethereal vocal stylings set the mood. Sadly, and to the slight consternation of many in the crowd, the wonderful Feist wasn’t with BSS on this tour, but Lisa Lobsinger more than made up for her absence. As Molly used to say, do yourself a favour.
Update: Via the wonders of Wikipedia, I’ve discovered some more great Canadian indie music. The good thing about BSS is that they’re a collective without fixed membership, so draw on the talents of other Canadian musicians. You can listen to some of Lisa’s previous band’s tracks here at New Music Canada and sample the wonderful Feist here.
Brad Norington in today’s Australian gives us the heads up on the News Limited circle jerk that’s coming our way on Monday.
Written by The Australian’s team of journalists and commentators, The Howard Factor: A decade that changed the nation, will be published on Monday and launched by Mr Howard on March 2.
I’m sure this conga line of so-called journalists will give a fair and balanced assessment of the Howard years, and of course I’m looking forward to that lengthy chapter on a decade of race baiting.
But this quoted ode to individual enterprise for the common man by the PM is just so much tosh given that Mr Howard has spent so much of his working life sampling the trappings of Government life.
“So this idea that life is not quite a five-days-a-week existence was with me at a very early stage. I guess working for yourself, working for private enterprise, and not working for the government, was something I was brought up to believe in.”
Um, yeah, I noticed that about him. Privately enterprising himself all the way to Kirribilli.
I very much doubt if George W. Bush and Tony Blair were gone from the scene, the Coalition of the Willing would stay in Iraq a single minute longer, all the talk of spreading freedom and democracy and staying the course notwithstanding. Back in late 2004, the US announced that the insurgency was almost defeated. In 2003, George W. Bush proclaimed “Mission Accomplished”. In 2006, one of the most sacred sites of Shia, the al-Askari or Golden Mosque in Samarra has been bombed, probably by insurgents associated with Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi (whose death has been prematurely announced by the Americans frequently). As Paul Rogers writes, Samarra, a Sunni majority city, has been an object lesson for the failure of the latest American counter-insurgency strategy, as reported in specialist defence publications, if not in the mainstream media. The weak and Shia dominated Iraqi government now ignores the diktats of the American Ambassador/Plenipotentiary, Zalmay Khalilzad, who threatened on Monday to cut off US aid (although all the reconstruction funds have been spent, and Baghdad still has only 4 hours of power a day and only 25% of Iraqis have access to clean water). Now, as 168 Sunni mosques have been attacked, 10 Sunni Imams killed and 15 abducted, Khalilzad warns that Iraq is slipping into a sectarian civil war, and the American military are throwing up their hands about what they are meant to be doing in Iraq.
What is to be done? No one, it seems, knows any more. Is there anyone who still argues that Iraq is on track to a peaceful and democratic future, in the face of humanitarian disaster, and the effective and tragic wreck of a country? Could Paul Wolfowitz be asked, in light of his 2003 predictions, where all the flowers have gone, long time passing?
Continue reading ‘Samarra Blues… Where have all the flowers gone?’
An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss whatever you like.
Here, and also here, is some interesting empirical research contesting the view that Australians have generally become more conservative under the Howard government:
So why do the punters keep re-electing the Howard government? The authors of the research agree with me.
The Government remains popular because of the strength of the economy and the weakness of the Opposition, the authors say.
Polls show the number of people saying their household’s financial situation had improved in the previous year have increased continuously during Mr Howard’s tenure with Australians giving credit to the Government. As well, they felt increasingly optimistic about the economy.
The weakness of Labor accounts for much of the Howard Government’s electoral success, the authors argue. Voter loyalty to the Labor Party has plunged. Voters identifying as Labor supporters dropped from 49 per cent in 1987 to just 32 per cent in 2004.
So what do you, oh wise readership, make of the kerfuffle about those ads?
Cheeky? Or just a bit too ocker? Is any backlash merely cultural cringe or are there still people in the world who find the words “bloody hell” offensive?
Clearly, as the ads are being slighty re-worded for certain Asian markets, even the creators think so: and does “where are you?” convery any Australianess at all? Does mild obscenity really capture the spirit of our nation?
If so, what does that say about those bloody Orstrayan Values everyone’s always banging on about?
After Alisa Camplin won her gold medal in aerial skiing at the 2002 Winter Olympics, I somewhat flippantly wrote that her skills in intricate twists, turns and backflips qualified her for a career in politics. Now that she has added an Olympic bronze in the same discipline to her mantelpiece, it behoves me to reflect more seriously on the significance of her achievement.
Continue reading ‘Alisa Camplin as a Role Model for Boys?’
Pity the Cos. Reduced to gags to get serious airtime. I almost miss the days of veiled language and speculation. I dread to think what the final puff of smoke will look like at this rate. On the upside, if it’s a push for commiting poetry and famous speeches to memory, at least he will make an amusing footnote.
A couple of interesting snippets in the Oz’ media section today (they don’t seem to be online, but perhaps I read it somewhere else). There are rumours that PBL is going to close down the paper edition of The Bulletin - said to be losing 5 million a year - and put the mag online only. Young James apparently doesn’t have the same interest as Kerry in “setting the nation’s agenda” at a loss, and particularly not at a time when PBL’s costs are under pressure. I very much doubt this would be a success. It’s also been reported that New Matilda is close to its breakeven point of 5000 subscriptions, but there’s an obvious niche market for a publication like that. I stopped reading the Bully years ago. I get business news from the Fin (and sometimes BRW), and the Bully’s coverage of politics is completely dispensible. I’d be interested in seeing an age profile of its subscription base, but I really doubt it’s the sort of online product that would particularly appeal to a larger audience, and despite hyperlinking on the ninemsn site, they’d lose the airport/newsagent impulse cover driven buy. No doubt, if this is true, PBL think this is all part of big meeja moving to colonise the internets, but I reckon the more likely outcome is a waystation to closure. Though maybe it would be sustainable if they made deep staff cuts.
Update: I actually read about it in the Crikey email, I’ve now been reminded by an email correspondent. I haven’t verified the claims that Crikey made about PBL’s costs, though they’re consistent with what’s been written in the financial press generally over the last month or so.
After a long period of gestation (also known as “high level Cabinet consideration”), the Government has decided to preserve Qantas’ oligopoly over the Sydney to LA route, disadvantaging consumers and making a mockery of its rhetoric about competition. This is typical of the Howard government’s practice - short term decisions which are designed to preserve the rents extracted from powerful business interests, and a balls up of a policy characterised by over-regulation and confusion. Just like AWB, Qantas is defending itself on the basis that the world market is “distorted”. Qantas is playing the Government for suckers, threatening to move thousands of jobs offshore. The Government is attune to the political implications of such a threat (which is probably just a bluff), but strangely deaf to another political issue.
The Fin Review today revealed that the context for Qantas’ rhetoric is not just preserving its market position through favourable Government intervention, but also negotiations for a new enterprise agreement with maintenance staff. Qantas is attempting to make its workforce more flexible, proposing changes to ordinary hours of work, and other conditions. There’s nothing new in this - often flexibility works well for employees too, and is supported by unions. The difference in the era of WorkChoices is that there is no longer a no disadvantage test. Far from increasing pay to compensate for less favourable conditions, Geoff Dixon wants to cut the wages of maintenance workers by an average of $15000 a year.
The justification for WorkChoices was international competitiveness, and this is the drum Dixon is beating. But if I was a Qantas employer, and I found that I’d have to sacrifice 15 grand to help make Australia great, no amount of blah about national security, economic growth and trust from the Howardians would make me vote for them. The Labor party should take a break from its AWB inquisition, and run on this issue.
Priest has played a tough game, and it serves the purposes of his enemies to portray him now as a Walter Mitty character in an attempt to destroy his credibility.
Apparently It’s now ok to embellish the facts in order to tell a greater truth. Sweet!
You had to hear it. It wasn’t just that the content went well beyond the set speech in its honeyed recall of the sunny days that the Howard government shared with the Clinton administration; it was the voice. Listening to Dolly’s lathering obsequiousness, my breakfast milk curdled. “Thank you foreign minister”, said Bill in perfect reply, “I’m looking forward to your memoirs.”
Tonight David Irving is behind bars for publicly denying the existence of the Holocaust some 17 years ago, while newspapers around the Northern world are republishing cartoons that mock the image of the Prophet Mohammed causing offence to many Muslims around the world. Is this appropriate?
If you set aside the fact that Irving’s statements were made a long time ago and the fact that he has since recanted his views, then the core issues here are whether freedom of expression should be boundless, whether there are good reasons for limiting its scope, and, if so, when are these limitations appropriate?
Continue reading ‘What are the appropriate limits of freedom of expression?’
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