The Prime Minister has written a long essay for the next issue of The Monthly, excerpts from which are available on the web. Robert Corr extracts the telling quote:
The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes. … Neo-liberalism, and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced, has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. … Government is not the intrinsic evil that neo-liberals have argued it is. Government, properly constituted and properly directed, is for the common good, embracing both individual freedom and fairness, a project designed for the many, not just the few.
He shuns any embrace of old-fashioned socialism. For Rudd, Labor’s task is to hold the middle ground – between state socialism and free-market fundamentalism. He argues the failure of neo-liberalism has made the state the primary actor; it must save the financial system, stimulate the economy and impose a new global regulatory regime.
Rudd has put Turnbull on notice. His plan is to convert the global crisis into a historic failure of Liberal Party philosophy and its pro-market ideas.
I’m a bit sceptical about whether the Howard government actually was a neo-liberal regime. Dirigism for its supporters at the top end of town and populist handouts for the masses, while seeking to control more or less everything was more its style. But here probably the direction and intent of regulation and interventionism is more important than the size of the state. I suspect, though, Rudd will get away with making the charge stick to the Liberals. And that, I think, is the purpose of the exercise. I’m not sure how much ideological content there actually is in Rudd’s essay. I think the ideological chasm Lenore Taylor perceives might be a tad illusory.
Elsewhere: Jason Soon, probably predictably, isn’t impressed, but I think he has exposed some flaws in Rudd’s argument and logic.
There’s a story in the News Limited tabloids today suggesting that any plebiscite for a Republic is to go on the backburner, because Kevin Rudd fears that there would be a voter backlash in economic hard times. Backbencher Mark Dreyfus QC has recently been pushing the government for action on the Labor pledge to hold a plebiscite.
It’s interesting to note that the article suggests that the delay in responding to the 2020 summit, which I queried in a post earlier this month, might be related to a perception that all the bells and whistles it recommended could be seen as unnecessary noise in hard times.
I can understand the thinking behind downplaying some of the big ticket items from the 2020 summit, but I’m puzzled as to the reasoning that raising the Republic would cause “a backlash from voters in marginal seats – many of whom were fearful of losing their jobs”. Surely this is just the line John Howard used against Paul Keating during the 90s recession? Speaking of Paul Keating, his comments about Rudd’s advisors being afraid to get out of bed without a focus group report come to mind.
It’s difficult to know what to think about the human tragedy of the terrible event on the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne yesterday. I simply can’t contemplate what would possess somebody to (according to witness accounts reported in The Age) throw his four-year-old daughter off the top of a bridge.
Whatever the appropriate policy response to these events (and the broader issues around family violence, something we perhaps don’t cover enough on LP), I’m rather surprised at the government immediate response – fast-tracking installation of suicide barriers on the bridge.
I appreciate that suicides (and, perhaps, this man’s actions) are often impulsive events, and that a bridge like the Westgate represents a particularly accessible and obvious place where that impulse might be exercised. There may well be a case for installing such barriers on the bridge as soon as possible. But if the impulse to kill a four-year-old child strikes a fully-grown adult, there are innumerable other ways in which they can achieve, and, on too many other occasions have achieved, that terrible goal.
So, if other children are to be saved from similar fates, fencing off high things is a pretty unlikely way to achieve it. Intervening before it gets to this point – and I don’t claim to know how that might be done better, in this case or in general – would seem to me to be the only approach that has any long-term chance of a substantial reduction in the incidence of such shocking events, including the less dramatic ones that get reported as statistics rather than news.
In an earlier post riffing off the Katherine Wilson hoax on Keith Windschuttle and Quadrant, I made some comments about the absence of any real political force representing small l Liberalism, to the consternation of some commenters on the ensuing thread. It would seem that I’m not alone in holding this view, judging by Norman Abjorensen’s article in Inside Story today. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with Abjorensen’s dichotomy of romantics and realists, but I think he’s close to the mark here:
And herein lies a lesson for the modern day romantics on the centre-right who dream of an impending epiphany in the Liberal Party: there is simply no constituency for it. Sure, there are the disgruntled social liberals still in or close to the Liberal Party, the former Democrats without a home and fragments of an uncommitted middle class. But this is a small and probably shrinking constituency, as the Australian Democrats discovered to their peril.
Abjorensen is sceptical about the claims sometimes made about an enduring Deakinite liberal tradition, pointing out that Deakin himself succumbed to the “ruthless game of hard-headed pragmatism” a century ago.
Well we’ve had almost a month of 2009 so it must be time again to condemn. Here’s a 33rd open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this year so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, *specifically 2009* and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except Juana Molina.
I didn’t see any discussion in the Australian media of a mid-January piece by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in The Guardian, where he argues that the “war on terror” was a most unfortunate phrase, and quite counterproductive. Later, Miliband clarified that the British government had deliberately eschewed its use for some time. It would be interesting to take a close look at the rhetoric of the Rudd government, and of Barack Obama, to see whether they’ve been using it. Miliband’s clarification is certainly most welcome.
The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common. Terrorist groups need to be tackled at root, interdicting flows of weapons and finance, exposing the shallowness of their claims, channelling their followers into democratic politics.
The “war on terror” also implied that the correct response was primarily military. But as General Petraeus said to me and others in Iraq, the coalition there could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife.
Of course, these sorts of points have been made for a long time by a lot of the more sane participants in the debate, who were loudly denounced as akin to the enemy within by some. It’s good to see the tide turning at the governmental level.
Update: Speculation that Barack Obama will also be retiring the phrase “war on terror”.
In the wake of yesterday’s item on problems within Liberal National ranks, an anonymous source claimed that the LNP Shadow Cabinet meeting on 19 January had been given over to debate about Lawrence Springborg’s “small target” strategy, and that there were elements of the party who thought Jeff Seeney might make a better go of challenging Anna Bligh. Just in case, the source assured us, Labor had prepared an alternative strategy in the event Seeney gets up. Springborg, whose electoral record as leader stands at 0 out of 2, rolled Seeney for the leadership of the Nationals just over a year ago.
Mischief-making, perhaps. Swapping leaders at this stage would be an impressively suicidal move for the LNP, but stranger things have happened. Just ask Colin Barnett.
It probably is mischief-making, but it does highlight the fact that the LNP – whose sole raison d’etre is supposed to be unity (as The Borg’s nickname unintentionally suggests…) – is not exactly the happy family they’d like to make out. There’s no doubt that Jeff Seeney still isn’t a happy camper, and his ominous remarks about the influence of fundies in his overthrow gave away a few clues to his future intentions.
It really is all or nothing for Lawrence, though. Seeney arguably had a greater capacity to mount an argument against Bligh, but he was far too “country” and aggressive. Aside from him, the cupboard’s bare. There’s no way the Nats would accept a leader from the Libs – even from the Santoro faction – and it’s not as if they’re particularly attractive prospects. Who’s left if the Borg loses? It’s interesting to ponder…
For anyone following the declining fortunes of the newspaper (and perhaps of journalism), there’s some interesting reading on the intertubes today. At Inside Story, MEAA communications director Jonathan Este takes a look at the trends – and the different strategies of media moguls (now making a comeback, it seems) and public companies. Meanwhile, Robert Corr examines Nicholas Sarkozy’s bailout of the French press and discusses the arguments for government intervening in the newspaper business to correct market failure that have been proposed recently.
This is a rarity – something genuinely cool from Microsoft. While Photosynth is apparently a couple of years old, it was new to me. The idea, in a nutshell, is to allow anybody to collate a large number of photos of the same scene, and combine them in a way that you can sort of fly through the scene in three dimensions. It’s not quite do-it-yourself high-resolution Google Earth, but it’s pretty funky nonetheless. If you are one of those people who takes a squillion photos of the Eiffel Tower, it seems like a way to turn them into something rather more useful than a dull slideshow.
Tech columnist Farhad Manjoo’s take on it is more than a little breathless, featuring a number of “synths” put together by near-simultaneous images taken by crowds at a public event – the inauguration of Obama. In the process he does raise one interesting – if not completely original – point about our modern picture-taking culture – people are so busy taking pictures they don’t actually experience the event they’re capturing:
There is something vaguely embarrassing—even narcissistic—about our new era of mass photography. Because we’re always carrying cameras, we’re moved to document every moment of our lives—sometimes to the exclusion of actually experiencing that moment. Take a look at this picture of Barack and Michelle Obama at one of the inaugural balls. Everyone in the audience has a hand up with a cell phone pointed at the stage, but nobody is actually looking at what’s going on. The scene is puzzling: If the guy next to you is taking a picture—one that you can be reasonably sure will end up on a photo-sharing site somewhere—why do you need one, too? But we do this often these days. Win Butler, the lead singer of the band Arcade Fire, once told Terry Gross that he and his band mates have stopped going out into the crowd to perform because nobody pays attention to them—everyone’s got their cell phones and cameras in front of their faces.
Aside from running “news” stories that “couriermail.com.au readers” are shocked by Anna Bligh’s use of the government jet to fly to Townsville, the redoubtable News Limited ranks are continuing their early election frenzy at every available opportunity. Witness this piece in The Australian about the budget position:
The rapidly deteriorating economic conditions in Queensland will put pressure on the Bligh Government to hold an early election.
An election is due before September, but the prospect of rapidly rising unemployment by the middle of the year plus a tough budget in June may convince the Government to go to the polls in the next few months.
Note that this is “news”, not “opinion”.
I assume it’s News Limited itself who is putting on the pressure.
As I observed the other day, Treasurer Andrew Fraser has explicitly said that the timing of the election wouldn’t be influenced by a desire to avoid a tough budget, and Anna Bligh has repeatedly poured cold water on the early election speculation since she returned from holidays.
It’s much more likely that the state government wants to be seen to be taking the proverbial “decisive action” on jobs and the economy rather than rushing to the polls. And they want some more time to heighten the attack on the LNP. Graham Young’s online polling also suggests that there would be some cost to going early.
There are some interesting tidbits around today about where Queensland politics is at – at a point in time when the serious business of politics has started (at least for the ALP) but where I think the election is still quite a way off. Graham Young at What The People Want has released the results of his online poll – on issues and whether the state is “heading in the right direction” and on perceptions of Anna Bligh and Lawrence Springborg as leaders. This sort of polling is invaluable as it gives everyone access to similar sorts of data to that normally closely guarded by parties and polling companies, so it’s well worth a look. I’ll let the analysis speak for itself.
Meanwhile, in Crikey, Bernard Keane has had a look at the state of the LNP. The article is reproduced (with permission) over the fold.
A new study published in Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences conducts a little thought experiment. What happens if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gas emissions stop tomorrow? You’d hope that it might be a bit warm for a few decades, and gradually settle down. No such luck, according to this NOAA press release
A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald carries an article on the travails of Peter Garrett since becoming a member of the Labor Party, and in particular since becoming a member of the Federal Cabinet, as he has to take ownership of policies and decisions which many environmentally concerned people regard as wrong or inadequate.
Some of the criticism Garrett has received derides him as having personally “sold out” his environmentalist and other progressive commitments simply by being a member of the Labor Party. Some of it regards specific decisions he has made, or has ownership of as a member of Cabinet, as evidence of such a sellout. Other criticisms focus on his alleged lack of the necessary personal strength or competence to enable the making of environmentally sound decisions and policies.
I’m inclined to think that Kevin Rudd sank to new depths of populist patheticness when he replied to Australian of the Year Mick Dodson’s call for a debate on the timing of our national day with “no”. There was all sorts of tosh in the papers today about “united in diversity” and “freedom to differ” but actually the PM was refusing an invitation to have a “national conversation”, if you actually paid any attention to what he actually said.
It’s a pity in more ways than one, because such a national debate might actually have a side effect – educating people about why Australia Day is currently celebrated on 26 January!
[Graph from the Essential Research poll via Possum.]
Do you know why 26th January was chosen for celebrating Australia Day?
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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